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There's evidence to suggest the events in Charlottesville have motivated numerous individuals to join or actively reengage in dark web white supremacist forums.

Trump has faced a wave of bipartisan backlash in the wake of a jaw-dropping press conference Tuesday at Trump Tower in which he blamed the violence that led to the killing of counterprotester Heather Heyer in Charlottesville on both sides of the conflict, not solely on the neo-Nazis and white supremacists who instigated the rally.

"You had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. Nobody wants to say it, but I will say it right now," Trump said during a contentious back-and-forth with reporters in the lobby of his midtown Manhattan building.

The mixed messages coming from the White House have only fueled the escalating rhetoric from "alt-right" figures and notable white supremacists -- many of whom cheered Trump's statements Tuesday. Law enforcement officials have indicated they are worried about more violence ahead of the widespread alt-right rallies planned in coming weeks across the US.

"I just think the rhetoric has really brought this to a different level, and that's what we're worried about," Boston Police Commissioner William B. Evans said Friday when asked about an event planned in his city. "I've never seen so many people looking, almost looking for confrontation, and we've gotta knock it down."

James Norton, a former deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security under George W. Bush, said he thinks the President's remarks "obviously reignited the issue in a not-productive way."

"It is incumbent on the President to tone down the rhetoric and be clear that the US government has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to racially charged hate group organizations that's mission is to commit violence, spread fear and divide the country," he said.

Several organizers of the upcoming "alt-right" rallies have pledged that their events are about free speech, but that reasoning has done little to mitigate concerns.

"What they're doing is choosing flashpoints around the country to try to rally their people around," said Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism.

"They do it under guise of free speech or security," he said. "But really what it is is an opportunity for them to express their hatred in the communities."

The uptick of white supremacist online activity taking place within these secure chat rooms reflects "a new sense of motivation to either actively re-engage or get started in this community," according to Alex Kassirer, Flashpoint's director of counterterrorism.

And that renewed motivation has spawned a number of posts that echo the comments made by one subscriber to the white nationalist site Stormfront on Tuesday.

"Just want to say I've been a long time lurker, but with the events in Charlottesville I feel more supportive/compelled than ever. I want to join the fight for a White nation that rules as it was ..." the post said.

The decision of several online hosting providers to deny service to alt-right websites in the wake of the events in Charlottesville has resulted in the migration of such communities to the dark web, according to Flashpoint's analysis.

"Individuals with alt-right sympathies are actively seeking out spaces for interaction with like-minded individuals," which will "likely result in sustained surges of activity on deep dark web white supremacist forums," according to their recent report.

For the most part, local and federal law enforcement agencies said they will prepare for the upcoming rallies the same way they do for all public protests and rallies.

One law enforcement source at the Boston Police Department told CNN that they anticipate large crowds, but there is no indication of an uptick in white supremacist threats.

Officers "expect good behavior but will be prepared should it go bad," the source said.

The Department of Homeland Security said it continues to work with federal and local partners "to assess threats and analyze trends in activity from all violent extremist movements, regardless of ideology."

While law enforcement agencies may not be changing their approach following the violence in Charlottesville, CNN has previously reported that the threat from far-right groups has been on their radar for months, as noted by an internal DHS and FBI memo from May.

The authors of the memo predicted that attacks from white supremacist groups in the coming year would be mostly "spontaneous and involve targets of opportunity."

But despite monitoring efforts by law enforcement, alt-right and white supremacist organizers have been clear that they have no interest in deescalating the situation after Charlottesville.

"I think a lot more people are going to die here before we're done here, frankly," said Chris Cantwell, a white nationalist and speaker for "Unite the Right" in an interview with Vice News.

Former Ku Klux Klan Wizard David Duke called the deadly protests in Charlottesville "a turning point for the people of this country."

"We are determined to take our country back. We're going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump," Duke said in an interview while attending the rally on Saturday.

Duke also praised Trump's comments on Tuesday, thanking the President for his "honesty and courage" in a tweet.

"Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa," read the full tweet from an account that is not verified by Twitter but appears to represent Duke and features videos apparently posted by and of him.

CNN's Jessica Schneider and Rene Marsh contributed to this report.

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Trump's mixed messaging sparks concerns of 'emboldened' alt-right - CNN

Stephen K. Bannon thought hed only serve a year as the presidents chief political strategist. Rumors of his imminent sacking arose every few weeks. In April, the rumor that hed be plucked off the National Security Council actually proved true.

But even with the news Friday that the key Trump adviser was out of the White House , the leaders of the alt-right, which Bannon elevated and then denounced, predicted that their movement would continue.

Im sad to see Bannon go, but I was never sure who Bannon was ideologically and politically, said Richard Spencer, the white nationalist who popularized the term alt-right to rebrand the white nationalist movement. Hes a fighter, to be sure, and a populist in a basic sense, but what he actually believed was never clear.

Bannons detractors thought they knew what he believed. They pored over books he praised, especially the 1973 anti-refugee book The Camp of the Saints. They shuddered at how he called the news site he will return to lead, Breitbart, a platform for the alt-right, with verticals on black crime and paranoia about unchecked immigration.

Milo Yiannopoulos, a former Breitbart editor whom Bannon helped turn into a transgressive campus celebrity, said time will tell whether the Trump administration will drift into turpitude without Steve around.

[Steve Bannon says rivals wetting themselves, calls supremacists clowns, contradicts Trump on N. Korea]

Steve is far more dangerous and powerful outside of the White House now. And I think he will be happier, too. I cant wait to see Bannon the Barbarian viciously crush his enemies from whatever perch he believes he will be most effective from, Yiannopoulos said.

For Democrats, the removal of Bannon isnt enough. In statements Friday, Democratic lawmakers were sure to bring up the presidents comments on the violence in Charlottesville, and mention that the Trump administration still included Attorney General Jeff Sessions and immigration policy adviser Stephen Miller.

Steve Bannons firing is welcome news, but it doesnt disguise where President Trump himself stands on white supremacists and the bigoted beliefs they advance, said House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Its good news that hes not in the White House, said Rep. David N. Cicilline (D-R.I.), who has sought Bannons firing since November. But I dont think anyone should have any illusions that now that Steve Bannon is gone, the president is going to take very different positions. These are the presidents positions. These are the presidents policies. They remain.

A Nazi sympathizer, Klan defender, and supremacist protector should not be President of the greatest country in the world, said Rep. Al Green (D-Tex.) in a statement, who was first to introduce articles of impeachment against Trump.

No member of Trumps administration worried liberals as much as Bannon. They shared photos of the strategist looking particularly unkempt. The Onion portrayed Bannon as a ghoulish fairy tale villain, with a headline announcing that he had burst into millions of spores upon his departure.

Anthony Atamanuik, a Trump impersonator who hosts the weekly Comedy Central satire The President Show, cast the actor John Gemberling to play Bannon as a shambling, wide-eyed slob.

I conceived him as your friend who breaks out the Ouija board at the seance, Atamanuik said. He was the guy who came up with theories about aliens building the pyramids, because he could not entertain the possibility that they were built by black or brown people. I think we did something accurate without knowing it we had Trump being scared of him.

Progressive activists were genuinely scared of him. The first #FireBannon signs appeared at rallies the day after Trumps presidential victory. At some rallies, the chant No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA was altered to squeeze in a mention of Bannon. The chants never went away, and this week, many of the post-Charlottesville protests and vigils featured calls for Trump to fireBannon.

The progressive group Daily Action organized at least 44,000 calls to the White House demanding Bannon be removed; Color of Change, which has organized advertiser boycotts of Breitbart and other news sites, got close to 100,000 people to sign anti-Bannon petitions.

His record made him such a clear figure of what Trumps policies would mean for people, explained Rashad Robinson, the executive director of Color of Change. We wanted to say to members of Congress, who were seeking to treat this administration as normal, that theyd be held accountable for doing business with people like this.

The success of those left-wing protests left a bitter taste for Bannons alt-right defenders. As the Bannon news circulated on Reddit and 4chan forums, Trump fans veered between rationalization (He will return to Breitbart in a civilian capacity in order to fight in the culture war) and depression (Why would you contact a leftist columnist and give an unsolicited interview in which you kill your reputation and give the media an angle on you?).

Vox Day, an alt-right activist and science fiction author, argued that Bannons enemies had missed the real reason he was terminated. Bannons nationalism, for all the hate it drew, put him on the opposing side of neoconservatives the war hawks that the left used to hate.

Hes not a bureaucrat, and the kind of strategic advice he offers Trump can just as easily be provided from outside, Day said. My one concern is that this could mean that the military interventionists are going to get their way in Syria, Venezuela and North Korea. I suppose well find out soon enough.

Mike DeBonis contributed to this report.

Read more at PowerPost

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Steve Bannon may be out, but the 'alt-right' says their movement will continue - Washington Post

I see that my colleagues are referring to the new online Encyclopedia of Libertarianism as a Wikipedia for libertarianism. I suppose thats sort of true, in that its an online encyclopedia. But its not exactly Hayekian, as Jimmy Wales describes Wikipedia. That is, it didnt emerge spontaneously from the actions of hundreds of thousands of contributors. Instead, editors Ronald Hamowy, Jason Kuznicki, and Aaron Steelman drew up a list of topics and sought the best scholars to write on each one people like Alan Charles Kors, Bryan Caplan, Deirdre McCloskey, George H. Smith, Israel Kirzner, James Buchanan, Joan Kennedy Taylor, Jeremy Shearmur, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, Norman Barry, Richard Epstein, Randy Barnett, and Vernon L. Smith, along with many Cato Institute experts. In that regard its more like the Encyclopedia Britannica of libertarianism, a guide to important topics by top scholars in the relevant field.

The Britannica over the years has published articles byAlbert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Marie Curie, Leon Trotsky, Harry Houdini, George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, Milton Friedman, Simon Baron Cohen, and Desmond Tutu. They may have slipped a bit when they published articles by Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Lee Iacocca. And particularly when they chose to me to write their entry on libertarianism.

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Is the Encyclopedia of Libertarianism like Wikipedia? - Cato Institute (blog)

Tawana Glenda Brawley (born 1972) is an African-American woman from Wappingers Falls, New York, who gained notoriety in 198788 for falsely accusing four white men of having raped her. The charges received widespread national attention because of her age (15), the persons accused (including police officers and a prosecuting attorney), and the state in which Brawley was found after the alleged rape. She was found in a trash bag, with racial slurs written on her body and covered in feces. Brawley's accusations were given widespread media attention in part from the involvement of her advisers, including the Reverend Al Sharpton and attorneys Alton H. Maddox and C. Vernon Mason.[1]

After hearing evidence, a grand jury concluded in October 1988 that Brawley had not been the victim of a forcible sexual assault and that she herself may have created the appearance of such an attack.[2][3] The New York prosecutor whom Brawley had accused as one of her alleged assailants successfully sued Brawley and her three advisers for defamation.[3]

Brawley initially received considerable support from the African-American community.[4] Some suggested that Brawley was victimized by biased reporting that adhered to racial stereotypes.[5][6] The mainstream media's coverage drew heated criticism from the African-American press and many black leaders who showed no degree of skepticism or disbelief of the teenager and her story.[7] The grand jury's conclusions decreased support for Brawley and her advisers. Brawley's family has maintained that the allegations were true.

On November 28, 1987, Tawana Brawley, who had been missing for four days from her home in Wappingers Falls, New York, was found seemingly unconscious and unresponsive, lying in a garbage bag several feet from an apartment where she had once lived. Her clothing was torn and burned, her body smeared with feces. She was taken to the emergency room, where the words "KKK", "nigger", and "bitch" were discovered written on her torso with a black substance described as charcoal.[2]

A detective from the Sheriff's Juvenile Aid Bureau, among others, was summoned to interview Brawley, but she remained unresponsive. The family requested a black officer, which the police department was able to provide. Brawley, described as having an "extremely spacey" look on her face, communicated with this officer with nods of the head, shrugs of the shoulder, and written notes. The interview lasted 20 minutes, during which she uttered only one word: "neon". Through gestures and writing, however, she indicated she had been raped repeatedly in a wooded area by three white men, at least one of whom, she claimed, was a police officer. A sexual assault kit was administered, and police began building a case. Brawley provided no names or descriptions of her assailants. She later told others that there had been no rape, only other kinds of sexual abuse. Forensic tests found no evidence that a sexual assault of any kind had occurred. There was no evidence of exposure to elements, which would have been expected in a victim held for several days in the woods at a time when the temperature dropped below freezing at night.[8]

Public response to Brawley's story was at first mostly sympathetic. Actor Bill Cosby, among others, pledged support and helped raise money for a legal fund. In December 1987, 1,000 people, including Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, marched through the streets of Newburgh, New York, in support of Brawley.[9]

Brawley's claims in the case captured headlines across the country. Public rallies were held denouncing the incident. Racial tension climbed. When civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton, with attorneys Alton H. Maddox and C. Vernon Mason, began handling Brawley's publicity, the case quickly took on an explosive edge. At the height of the controversy in June 1988, a poll showed a gap of 34 percentage points between blacks (51%) and whites (85%) on the question of whether she was lying.[10]

Sharpton, Maddox, and Mason generated a national media sensation. The three claimed that officials all the way up to the state government were trying to cover up defendants in the case because they were white. Specifically, they named Steven Pagones, an Assistant District Attorney in Dutchess County, New York, as one of the rapists, and called him a racist, among other accusations.[11]

The mainstream media's coverage drew heated criticism from the African-American press and leaders for its treatment of the teenager.[12][13][14] They cited the leaking and publication of photos taken of her at the hospital and the revelation of her name despite her being underage.[15] In addition, critics were concerned that Brawley had been left in the custody of her mother, stepfather and advisers, rather than being given protection by the state, and that she was used as a pawn by adults who should have protected her:[16]

State law provides that if a child appears to have been sexually molested, then the Child Protective Services Agency is supposed to take jurisdiction and custody of that child. Now, Tawana Brawley was 15 at the time of the incident. If that had been done... early on, the agency would have given her psychiatric attention and preserved evidence of rape, if there was evidence, and Mason and Maddox would have been deprived of their pawn.

Under the authority of New York State Attorney General Robert Abrams, a grand jury was called to hear evidence. On October 6, 1988, the grand jury released its 170-page report concluding Brawley had not been abducted, assaulted, raped and sodomized, as had been claimed by Brawley and her advisers. The report further concluded that the "unsworn public allegations against Dutchess County Assistant District Attorney Steven Pagones" were false and had no basis in fact. To issue the report, the grand jury heard from 180 witnesses, saw 250 exhibits and recorded more than 6,000 pages of testimony.[3]

In the decision, the grand jury noted many problems with Brawley's story. Among these were that the rape kit results did not indicate sexual assault. Additionally, despite her claim of having been held captive outdoors for days, Brawley was not suffering from hypothermia, was well-nourished, and appeared to have brushed her teeth recently. Despite her clothing being charred, there were no burns on her body. Although a shoe she was wearing was cut through, Brawley had no injuries to her foot. The racial epithets written on her were upside down, which led to suspicion that Brawley had written the words. Testimony from her schoolmates indicated she had attended a local party during the time of her supposed abduction. One witness claimed to have observed Brawley's climbing into the garbage bag.[17] The feces on her body were identified as coming from her neighbor's dog.[18] Brawley never testified.[19]

Much of the grand jury evidence pointed to a possible motive for Brawley's falsifying the incident: trying to avoid violent punishment from her mother and her stepfather, Ralph King. Witnesses testified that Glenda Brawley had previously beaten her daughter for running away and for spending nights with boys. King had a history of violence that included stabbing his first wife 14 times, later shooting and killing her. There was considerable evidence that King could and would violently attack Brawley: when Brawley had been arrested on a shoplifting charge the previous May, King attempted to beat her for the offense while at the police station. Witnesses also described King as having talked about his stepdaughter in a sexualized manner.[20] On the day of her alleged disappearance, Brawley had skipped school to visit her boyfriend, Todd Buxton, who was serving a six-month jail sentence. When Buxton's mother (with whom she had visited Buxton in jail) urged her to get home before she got in trouble, Brawley told her, "I'm already in trouble." She described how angry King was over a previous incident of her staying out late.[21]

There was evidence that Brawley's mother and King participated knowingly in the hoax. Neighbors told the grand jury that in February they overheard Glenda Brawley saying to King, "You shouldn't have took the money because after it all comes out, they're going to find out the truth." Another neighbor heard Mrs. Brawley say, "They know we're lying and they're going to find out and come and get us."[20]

In April 1989, New York Newsday published claims by a boyfriend of Brawley's, Daryl Rodriguez, that she had told him the story was fabricated, with help from her mother, in order to avert the wrath of her stepfather.[22] Writing about the case in a 2004 book on perceptions of racial violence, sociologist Jonathan Markovitz concluded "it is reasonable to suggest that Brawley's fear and the kinds of suffering that she must have gone through must have been truly staggering if they were enough to force her to resort to cutting her hair, covering herself in feces and crawling into a garbage bag."[5]

The case exposed deep mistrust in the black community about winning justice from legal institutions.[16] Some opinions remained fixed despite the overwhelming evidence. Legal scholar Patricia J. Williams wrote in 1991 that the teenager "has been the victim of some unspeakable crime. No matter how she got there. No matter who did it to herand even if she did it to herself."[23] These comments aroused controversy as well.[24] On May 21, 1990, Alton H. Maddox was indefinitely suspended by the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn after failing to appear before a disciplinary hearing to answer allegations regarding his conduct in the Brawley case.[25]

In 1998, Pagones was awarded $345,000 (he sought $395 million) through a lawsuit for defamation of character that he had brought against Sharpton, Maddox and Mason. The jury found Sharpton liable for making seven defamatory statements about Pagones, Maddox for two and Mason for one. The jury deadlocked on four of the 22 statements over which Pagones had sued, and it found eight statements to be non-defamatory.[26] In a later interview, Pagones said the turmoil caused by the accusations of Brawley and her advisers had cost him his first marriage and much personal grief.[27]

Pagones also sued Brawley. She defaulted by not appearing at the trial, and the judge ordered her to pay Pagones damages of $185,000.[28] The $65,000 judgment levied against Al Sharpton was paid for him in 2001 by supporters, including attorney Johnnie Cochran plus former businessman Earl G. Graves, Jr.[29][30] In December 2012, the New York Post reported that Maddox had paid his judgment of $97,000 and Mason was making payments on the $188,000 which he owed. Brawley reportedly had not made any payments.[31] The following month a court ordered her wages garnished to pay Pagones.[32][33]

In a 1997 appearance, Brawley maintained she did not invent the story; she still had supporters.[34] In November 2007, Brawley's stepfather and mother, in a 20th-anniversary feature for the New York Daily News, contended the attack happened. "How could we make this up and take down the state of New York? We're just regular people," Glenda Brawley said." They said they had asked New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and Governor Eliot Spitzer to reopen the case. They also said that Brawley, who has converted to Islam, would speak at any legal proceedings.[35] As of 2013, Brawley lives in Virginia, under a new name, where she works as a nurse.[36]

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Tawana Brawley rape allegations - Wikipedia

Matt Furie, the cartoonist whose Pepe the Frog character was hijacked as the symbol ofwhite supremacists and the alt-right during the election, has killed the character, conceding defeat in trying to reclaim it.

Matt Furie with a great single page send-off. #freecomicbookday #mattfurie https://t.co/lKGUL9lmyd pic.twitter.com/qhngOyoVPV

Brandon Kelly (@therealphaTT) May 6, 2017

Writes Buzzfeed:

In the 2010s, Pepe the frog became a symbol of internet trolls, moving up from Myspace where it was created and popularised in 2005 to the lofty, notoriously aggressive, and troll-filled 4chan. It was on 4chan, and with the burgeoning alt-right movement, that Pepe the frog was transformed from a reactionary meme to a coordinated white supremacist image. Hillary Clintons staff even wrote an explainer on Pepe in 2016 and the Anti-Defamation League called the cartoon a hate symbol.

Pepe creator Furie had hoped to reclaim his creation, denouncing the use of the cartoon as a hate symbol. A campaign was started to save Pepe the frog but failed to really put a dent in the alt-rights transformation of the image.

In late 2016, Furie described the situation in an article he wrote for Time as a nightmare.

White supremacist homocon journalists Jim Hoft and Lucian Wintrich displaying a hand signal associated with Pepe.

Real News Joins the White House Briefing Room https://t.co/Iv3QVHVhQI

Jim Hoft (@gatewaypundit) February 15, 2017

Adds the Guardian:

Furie had been attempting to wrench back his peaceful frog-dude whom he has often said he imagined as an extension of his personality for more than six months. Pepes passing has been interpreted of his ceding control of the character.

Shaun Manning wrote in Comic Book Resources that the rehabilitation of Pepe was always going to be a struggle, and its hard to imagine Furie taking much joy in creating new Pepe strips knowing that, whatever his own intentions, the character would be read through tinted lenses.

While its unlikely Pepes official death will stop extremists from co-opting his image, this was, perhaps, the most effective way for Furie to reclaim his character; Pepes soul has returned to his creator. Rest in Peace.

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'Pepe the Frog' Character Killed By Its Creator in Concession ...