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with Republicans decrying the “deep state,” the F.B.I. is cautious about investigating far-right groups.
This, as much as anything else, is what is wrong with the US right now. EVERY fucking topic, EVERY fucking solution, comes down to "let's not piss off the right."
Motherfuckers, when is it time to stop giving a shit whether we piss them off, and worry more about doing the right thing?
Because the right wingers are voting in the politicians that hold the purse strings of the department and right wing politicians have historically increased funding to the department.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/03/fbi-trump-mar-a-lago-raid-prosecution/673251/
"home of the brave" my fucking ass.
It's "land of the fee, home of the billionaire" now.
It may have always been. There are mineral rights on land around me that date back to the 1850s when the railroad tycoons were given carte blanch to take over land while building the intercontinental railroad. How does some rich person/group/consortium/bank/railroad own the land under me 175 years later?
Culture war bullshit
Alternate title: 'Right wing terrorism succeeds as keeping federal investigations at bay.'
We should really make a corrected titles news channel.
Idk. I think "FBI refuses to investigate self" is in the running too.
Holy fucking shit this country is in a downward spiral and the only cure is to cut out the MAGAt tumors.
In what other country could the headlines say "CONVICTED FELON calls the justice system rigged, so the law enforcement branch has decided to let their cult of outspokenly bigoted, dangerously violent, sprinkled with domestic terrorist in-group do whatever they want while destroying things in order to try and keep them from destroying things"
I remember reading some headlines from about 80 years ago with similar headlines, only it was from Germany. Can't punish them TOO much or they might take over the country and start exterminating.... Oh.... Wait... That is exactly what happened.
They're literally showing a group favoritism to avoid seeming like they're playing favorites.
This is no different than the school bully screaming about how unfair the teachers are after they were punished for hitting another student. Except now the teachers started saying "well if we keep punishing him then he will go hit someone" as if that in any way shape or form is a logical conclusion.
Fuck the system. If it doesn't work for the betterment of society then there isn't a reason to abide by it.
In 2021, when Brown was twenty-two, he became a regional director of Patriot Front—one of the most active of the white-nationalist, neo-fascist, and anti-government organizations that academic researchers collectively characterize as the modern far right.
Time to post this again:
Worth noting, Patriot Front had a huge leak of data in 2022.
Patriot Front Fascist Leak Exposes Nationwide Racist Campaigns
You can download it at the following torrent address:
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:2c87816e4c81990fb25bbca43dd8d578eaa55886&dn=patriotfront&tr=udp%3A%2F%2F9.rarbg.to%3A2920&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.opentrackr.org%3A1337&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fexodus.desync.com%3A6969
I happen to be seeding this on a permanent basis. I have a gigabit uplink. Please leach and share. Expose these fucks.
Vincent wasn’t a Fed, though. He was one of a growing number of far-left vigilantes who are infiltrating the far right. Sometimes such impostors adopt false online personas in order to gain entrance to chat groups or private servers. Others, like Vincent, go undercover in the real world, posing as white nationalists to attend meetings and demonstrations. Some even participate in low-level crimes in order to establish their credibility—almost like undercover F.B.I. agents do, though they lack any of the protections, training, or restraints that come with a badge.
This is important work. You can read an excellent account in Talia Levin's Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy, a book about doing this infiltration online.
We live in dangerous times, people. I recently read Takeover - HITLER'S FINAL RISE TO POWER, about the last six months before H-fuck became Chancellor of Germany. What was stunning is that the Nazis never had a majority. They were on the edge of falling apart when they got into power. We have to stand against this shit no matter what because the ability for fashies to get control is ever-present.
Why does the FBI care about the opinions of domestic terrorists? FBI agents aren't elected to their positions. It's not like you can vote for your local district chief. They're not fucking county sheriffs.
Maybe it's because most of those that join forces are the same that burn crosses?
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fbi-white-supremacists-in-law-enforcement
I think it's more because those terrorists are either supported by or are actively holding political offices that are responsible for funding the FBI. I don't think that the FBI isn't corrupt or anything but they do a better job of weeding out KKK members and don't actively recruit them like most police departments do.
I cannot speak directly to that, and likely as not we'll never know. However historically fascists often get the benefit of doubt from whichever conservatives are in power when the fascists are active. It's how fascists often rise to power.
I agree with your initial point, also I wasn't explicitly clear. Tbe FBI are the US Top Cops, and well, cops don't like to investigate other cops.
Agreed
the right is always pissed off, its better if they're afraid of you.
Edit: I also can't think of a better reason for shutting down the FBI than them refusing to do their job because criminals might be upset at them.
This is how nations destabilize. States perpetuate themselves through maintaining the exclusive monopoly on violence and using that monopoly to secure certain guarantees for or against its people. The Roman empire saw a similar decline of administrative willpower and rises in both vigilantism and shitty little civil wars between the wealthy elite who really ran the show (spoiler alert). I'm convinced that Balkanization of the US is, at this point, inevitable. I'm not saying that's necessarily a good or bad thing in its own right. On one hand, it might be better for both the states and the world if we went to more of an EU type structure. On the other hand, a nuclear armed independent Texas.
On the other hand, a nuclear armed independent Texas.
...would be ~~invaded~~ liberated for oil during the first extended power outage.
I honestly believe Texas wouldn't last more than a few years without begging for someone, anyone to help them.
They aren't a self-sufficient state, no matter how much they pretend to be. They need a massive influx of goods that would all immediately halt or be indefinitely postponed (and massively marked up) if they broke off.
The real question is whether the treasonous MAGAt politicians who run the state would make a deal with Russia for assistance.
Year, singular. One hurricane or ice storm and they'll have their hand out for welfare.
The TX grid experienced grid wide brown outs during a heat wave, and it's only getting warmer. I don't see them lasting longer than a few months, especially since only so much material can come in through Beaumont. With the grid down not a whole lot of rail travel will be happening and fueling depot pumps are electric.
I'm giving the politicians extra time to let the plebs die off before they admit defeat.
Perhaps a bit generous, but I like to estimate with wiggle room.
Let's be honest, the moment a storm or heat/cold wave knock their grid out, they'll be demanding neighboring nations keep them afloat.
No Deal Texit, anyone?
Not really. The vast majority of refineries in the US can't use Texas crude. It's why the idea of shifting to using American oil over imported is laughable. Not only that we have no pipelines from our oil wells to the refineries, so those would have to be built, as well. Basically, it'd take decades and tens to hundreds of billions of dollars to shift from foreign oil to American.
I understand the words you are using and the concept they are conveying, but I'm having a hard time getting around said concept making zero sense, at least to my uninformed brain.
In other words,
There's two types of oil, essentially and I don't remember what they are called. When oil was easy to get we built refineries for that kind. When it got scarce you could only get the other kind.
The US in its infinite wisdom decided it was too expensive to build refineries for the new kind, so what we've been doing is sending the oil we pump to other countries who can refine it, then import the kind we can refine.
The transition to renewables cannot happen fast enough. My brain hurts.
You are correct except for the pipeline requirement as tech is changing.
Haliburton and the like have plans for in field micro refineries, they can easily switch to whole crude or even get it down to J8 which is similar to diesel without the additives, it wouldn't require a pipeline, and one wouldn't really be in the best interest considering how mobile shale-fracking well heads need to be.
There's a startup being funded by guess who that's aiming to do just this
Texas has so much of the US military production that I imagine the clandestine powers that be would take over the state in a fashion that would make the Epstein and Boeing whistleblower 'suicides' look tame.
On one hand, it might be better for both the states and the world if we went to more of an EU type structure.
That's what the US already was once, under the Articles of Confederation. It didn't really help in the way you're hoping it would.
I don't know that I'd agree that the EU and the articles of confederation are comparable. There were a few big differences, including states printing their own currency without a common exchange medium (as opposed to the Euro), and that the mechanism for funding the federal government was (IIRC) entirely voluntary. States could just choose to not send money without consequences, and most or all made the obvious choice of not funding the federal government. The articles of confederation also had a few things about it that were more progressive than the constitution; for example, if I'm remembering right, it offered automatic citizenship to all native Americans, which pissed a lot of the farmer-settlers right off.
It was also 250 years ago, so yeah.
Still, I think mentioning it is still at least somewhat useful in terms of demonstrating what "an EU type structure" is (a confederation, as opposed to a federation like the United States is now) and pointing out that weakening the central government in exchange for more sovereign individual states doesn't necessarily mean the public in those various states would be appeased.
Society really needs Kompromat on Fox News et al
To decent people, their regularly scheduled programming should be Kompromat enough.
For compromising information to be an effective lever, the subject must have the ability to feel shame.
Not necessarily. Fear is also an excellent motivator.
Well, the "lever" would actually be fear, I suppose, and the "of what" is how you access/throw it. The threat of compromising information is public shame; if you're using another kind of threat, then it's not the compromising material being effective there.
Harm can be inflicted regardless of shame. One doesn't need to be ashamed of a crime, for instance, for the consequences of being found out to carry weight. Hell, some of these "untouchables" probably brag about the stuff they get away with (at least in certain circles). It's the inauthentic apology angle: "You're not sorry for what you did, you're sorry you got caught."
I think you might be getting away from the original premise a bit - compromising information is only effective if the target is afraid of it coming to light, and that fear requires shame. That's all I'm saying; of course there are other ways of influencing people, but we're not talking about those, we're talking about having dirt on someone and threatening to release it to get them to do something you want.
Edit: Mostly, I'm highlighting the fact because of how Donald Trump has normalised not being ashamed of being a piece of shit. "Damaging" stuff comes out all the time and he's basically like "Yeah? So what?", and somehow that works. You could also look to David Letterman though; someone tried to blackmail him with his affair, and his response was to address it on national TV (which, whatever else I think about the guy, that was a BAMF move).
Society needs compromising private information on the "news" organization that it can then leverage for blackmail, extortion, quid pro quo agreements to exert control over decisions and actions of the news organization?
I know Citizens United made corporations akin to people, but I didn't know you could blackmail them now.
This is a great new development.
You think we can use any of these articles for that then? The viewers of Fox News are unlikely to have read them so that's close to private I guess.
https://newrepublic.com/article/182008/erik-prince-secret-global-group-chat-off-leash
https://politicalwire.com/2024/08/20/trump-called-his-own-supporters-basement-dwellers/
It's kinda funny because every FBI newsletter or press release for the last decade is nothing but right wing terrorism alerts with a few currently politically relevant blurbs like Gaza/Israel.
They are not brown so they get a pass
some of those who work forces are the same that burn crosses
Completely unrelated, but have any of you thought of taking up target shooting, or even flying FPV as hobbies? I think those would be fun hobbies. Like I said, completely unrelated.
I love shooting, keep my weapons clean and maintained, and have a mechanical lockbox specifically designed for a staged handgun.
Remember fascists, everyone around you that you "trust" is actually a fucking snitch about to turn you in any minute... You trusted them, you worthless fuck? They are ALL collecting evidence on you and when you least expect it, you're getting your door kicked in... Don't fall asleep tonight, they're coming for you...