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Looking back at the Capitol riot, Tasha Adams ponders her time as an Oath Keepers wife and asks: What if I had not supported him?

Him is her estranged husband, Stewart Rhodes, founder and leader of the Oath Keepers, an anti-government group whose members stand accused by federal authorities of having played a crucial role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. During nearly 23 years of marriage, Adams says she devoted herself to Rhodes aspirations. She worked as an exotic dancer to help put him through college, assisted in writing his papers and encouraged him to successfully apply to Yale Law School. When he was looking for direction in life a cause Adams helped him start the Oath Keepers.

Over the next few years, Adams became disillusioned by the far-right organization and her marriage. The Oath Keepers, she says, increasingly promoted conspiracy theories while engaging in extremist activities and rhetoric that demonstrated racial and ethnic biases. Meanwhile, her husband became emotionally and physically abusive, she says. In 2018, hoping to put Rhodes and the organization behind her, she left him and filed for divorce.

With congressional committees and federal investigators examining the threat posed by domestic extremists and their contribution to the insurrection, Adams has been conducting an exploration of her own life and culpability in the forming of the Oath Keepers. Her journey provides behind-the-scenes insights into how a Las Vegas car valet transformed into the leader of an organization that sought to overturn a presidential election.

Column One

A showcase for compelling storytelling from the Los Angeles Times.

If I hadnt helped him start it, I mean, there would probably still have been an insurrection, Adams, 49, says in an interview in this old logging town, not far from where she lives. But what would it have looked like? That is what Im trying to figure out.

Adams has not been shy about sharing her experiences tweeting critically about Rhodes and his organization, while launching an online crowdsourcing campaign to fund her divorce. Last month, she spoke at length with investigators for the special House committee examining the Capitol riot.

Eureka, the town not far from where Tasha Adams lives, is known as an old logging town.

(Tailyr Irvine / For The Times)

Dissecting what transpired in any relationship can be a fraught endeavor. This story is based on Adams recollections, as well as reviews of court records and interviews with two of her adult children, Dakota Vonn Adams and Sedona Rhodes, who confirmed their mothers account. More than a dozen current and former officers and board members of the Oath Keepers did not respond to requests for comment.

Rhodes did not respond to repeated phone calls and text messages. The 56-year-old has not been charged in the insurrection. He has said the Oath Keepers were in town to provide security for advisors to then-President Trump and supporters and did not intend to enter the building.

Adams, who speaks in rapid-fire sentences that frequently end in quips, starts each day by firing up a laptop on her kitchen countertop, scanning for news about the Oath Keepers.

She has read how 18 Oath Keepers have been indicted on conspiracy charges for forcing their way into the Capitol, and she has studied prosecutors damning portrait of Rhodes. They allege in court papers that Rhodes urged Oath Keepers to come to Washington to fight for Trump.

He was on the Capitol grounds during the insurrection, prosecutors say, and provided live updates to his members storming the building. Theres no indication that he entered the Capitol during the riot. Rhodes described the rioters as patriots and later compared the insurrection to the Boston Tea Party, prosecutors say.

Adams met Rhodes when she was an 18-year-old dance instructor at an Arthur Murray studio in Las Vegas, and he was a 25-year-old student.

She was the daughter of strict white Mormon parents who ran a window manufacturing business. Rhodes was an intense and worldly former Army paratrooper who maintained his military physique and parked cars for a living. He told her of growing up in a multi-ethnic Christian family, spending summers picking fruit alongside relatives. Rhodes has described himself as a quarter Mexican and part Native American, invoking that heritage at times to deflect against allegations that the Oath Keepers are sympathetic to racists.

Adams says she was drawn to Rhodes life experience because it was so different from mine.

An archival photograph of Tasha Adams during her honeymoon with Stewart Rhodes rests on a table.

(Tailyr Irvine / For The Times)

They had been dating four months when Rhodes accidentally dropped a .22-caliber handgun and shot himself in the face, blinding himself in the left eye. She says she felt obligated to assist him.

I was suddenly taking care of a man with a hole in his head, Adams says.

With Adams contemplating becoming a professional ballroom dancer, the couple struggled to make rent; she says Rhodes began to press her to find a more lucrative trade.

Every day, Adams recalls, he was like, You should be a stripper and make more money. She took up exotic dancing, earning $100 a night.

They married in 1994, and she worked at a high-end strip club until she had their first child, Dakota. Each night, Adams says, she helped Rhodes with his assignments at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and nurtured his dreams of becoming a lawyer.

I wanted a house with a treehouse for Dakota. I thought, man, I struck the jackpot, she says, describing her emotion upon Rhodes acceptance by Yale. Im married to a future Yale Law School graduate!

But Rhodes turned down high-paying internships his first year and took a nonpaying summer gig at a conservative think tank. He was more interested in causes than money, says Adams, adding, I knew then I was never going to get the treehouse. She says Rhodes charted a similar course after graduating in 2004, working mostly in smaller practices or as a freelance writer of legal briefs.

Rhodes had always been interested in politics, Adams says, and they both subscribed to libertarianism, a philosophy that promotes free markets and limited government. They fervently supported one of its staunchest adherents, then-Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas).

While volunteering for Pauls 2008 presidential campaign, Rhodes and Adams met veterans and former police officers who were drawn to the candidates libertarian views. Thats when Rhodes decided to form the Oath Keepers, a group focused on recruiting veterans, military personnel and police officers and encouraging them to remain true to the oath they swore to defend the Constitution and to disobey orders they consider illegal.

Adams says she liked the idea and believed in the groups focus. Its goals aligned with her libertarian views of limited government, and she saw it as a good way for her husband to tap his charisma to earn a living. She says she envisioned Oath Keepers as a a cigar club of like-minded libertarians.

I thought it was something he could do well, she says. What a great name, right? I thought, wow, we are going to sell a lot of T-shirts and motorcycle jackets.

By the time Rhodes launched the Oath Keepers in March 2009 two months after President Obama took office Adams says she realized the group was not going to be a cigar club, nor a libertarian version of the ACLU.

In a blog post that month, Rhodes wrote that his groups principal mission was to prevent the destruction of American liberty by preventing a full-blown totalitarian dictatorship from coming to power. Our Motto is Not on our watch!

Adams says she accepted Rhodes vision for the Oath Keepers because he seemed to mostly be pushing the boundaries of free speech and advocating for limited government.

For its first couple of years, the Oath Keepers operated on a tight budget. Adams says she handled its mailing lists and ran its website, keeping it updated with links to events, missives from Rhodes and links to news stories about the group.

According to pages captured by the Internet Archive, much of the site was dedicated to testimonials from members, many current and former military personnel, who expressed enthusiasm about joining the organization and its mission. I find no higher calling than to join forces with the Oath Keepers, and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with my fellow Americans in our own defense, wrote a member who identified himself as an Air Force officer in June 2009.

In November 2009, a person who identified himself as an Army veteran posted: Its time to stand up for liberty and truth above all else. To Reclaim the Republic for the people, by the people, of the people from the hands of tyranny. The poster added he was particularly concerned about puppet politicians, the Central Banking gangsters, the U.N. ...

With the rise of the tea party movement, the organization grew rapidly. At its height in 2015, the Oath Keepers had about 35,000 members, Adams says. Anti-hate groups have pegged its top membership at no more than 5,000.

Adams says she stepped away from the group in 2010 or 2011 and focused on raising her children. She and Rhodes would eventually have six. In her spare time, Adams blogged a bit, describing herself as a homeschooling, breastfeeding, homebirthing, libertarian, freedom fighting, gun-toting really cool mom.

On the blog, she described her husband as being cute and sexy and extolled his rise from being a down-on-his-luck car valet to leader of the Oath Keepers.

Adams cringes when she reads such posts. I was creating the world I wanted it to be, she says, not the one it was.

At the Oath Keepers height, in 2015, Adams says, the organization had about 35,000 members.

(Tailry Irvine / For The Times)

In 2013, Rhodes announced that the Oath Keepers would create teams, prepared with military-style training, to respond to the implosion of society. Until that point, such training had been prohibited, Adams says, because Rhodes didnt want his group to be considered a militia.

There is a stigma attached to militias, she says. And he wanted to avoid that.

Suddenly, she says, Oath Keepers were running around playing army.

The Oath Keepers in 2014 and 2015 assisted ranchers and miners in Nevada and Oregon in armed disputes with federal authorities. Rhodes also deployed Oath Keepers in 2014 to Ferguson, Mo., to patrol and protect businesses during protests unleashed by the shooting of a Black 18-year-old, Michael Brown, by a white police officer.

Rhodes was criticized by anti-hate groups for that action, and he was chastised by a local Oath Keepers leader for engaging in a racial double standard by failing to assist Black residents accusing law enforcement of abuses. Adams says she raised similar concerns with Rhodes, particularly after the Oath Keepers had defended white ranchers and miners.

Members of the Oath Keepers have generally avoided the kind of inflammatory rhetoric utilized by white supremacists. The groups bylaws prohibit anyone from joining who advocates, or has been or is a member, or associated with, any organization, formal or informal, that advocates discrimination, violence, or hatred toward any person based upon their race, nationality, creed, or color.

But experts say such circumspection belies how the Oath Keepers actions, and statements by members, have assisted in the spread of racist language and hate.

Members of Oath Keepers think of themselves as rejecting racism, yet they and allied groups have served as de facto security for neo-Confederate and alt-right groups, Sam Jackson, a professor at the University at Albany-SUNY wrote in his eponymous book about the Oath Keepers. In other words, like most of the contemporary patriot/militia movement, the [Oath Keepers] is not organized around a perceived racial identity, but neither is it as free of racism and bigotry as it likes to claim.

Jackson noted that Rhodes has wielded his Mexican heritage to push back on claims that he or the Oath Keepers are in league with racists, even as his group has disseminated videos that display bigotry toward undocumented migrants and Mexicans. Rhodes has compared Latino and Black Lives Matter activists to jihadist terrorists and well funded Marxist and racist agitators. He has said that illegal immigration was an invasion and described as dirtbags the mostly Black NFL players who protested racial injustice by kneeling during the national anthem.

Adams says she once believed that anti-hate groups were exaggerating the dangers the Oath Keepers posed because Rhodes convinced her the criticism was unfounded and a ploy to raise money.

After Ferguson and the armed standoffs, however, Adams says her views changed. While Rhodes and leaders did not tolerate discriminatory language I never heard him say anything like the N-word, she says, and he would get rid of anyone who did the estranged wife believes her husband and other Oath Keepers nevertheless exhibited racial and ethnic biases in several, frequently subtle ways. She cited their refusal to back Black residents protesting police abuse in Ferguson, their harsh rhetoric about immigrants and their vision for America. They described America as if they were looking out at a crowd at a baseball game, she says, and seeing a sea of white faces with rosy cheeks.

She adds that the Anti-Defamation League is correct in describing the Oath Keepers as a large right-wing anti-government extremist group. And the Southern Poverty Law Center is accurate, she says, in claiming the Oath Keepers is based on a set of baseless conspiracy theories about the federal government working to destroy Americans liberties.

Stewart Rhodes, founder of the citizen militia group known as the Oath Keepers, speaks during a rally outside the White House in 2017.

(Susan Walsh / Associated Press)

Among the conspiracy theories that Rhodes advocated on the Oath Keepers website and in frequent appearances on conservative TV and radio shows: A U.S. military exercise in 2015 might be a prelude to a coup, baseless claims about voter fraud in the 2016 election and a deep state takeover of the U.S. government. Later, after the 2020 election, he fully embraced and promoted unfounded conspiracies that the election had been stolen and supported Trumps efforts to stay in office.

Adams says she tried to temper Rhodes conspiratorial rhetoric because it didnt serve any purpose except make him look crazy.

By 2016, Adams says, Rhodes had become an ardent supporter of Trump, putting aside early doubts: Stewart thought Trump was too pro-government and pro-spending. Adams added that her estranged husbands attraction to the former president is obvious in hindsight: They are very similar in that they both push conspiracy theories. Its like watching a demagogue be attracted to a demagogue.

It was not possible to independently verify Adams descriptions of her role in the Oath Keepers. Jackson, the author and professor, says she did not come up in his research of the group. I would be surprised if they were coequals, the professor says, referring to Adams and her husband. He declined to speculate further on Adams role in the organization, saying he did not delve into Oath Keepers private lives because they could be difficult to untangle.

Living in remote areas of Montana, Adams says she had no friends, and her life revolved around keeping her husband happy and raising and schooling her children.

Those who know Adams say they rarely saw her outside the presence of Rhodes. Marcy Kuntz, Adams midwife for three births starting in 2006, recalls that Adams didnt speak much about herself, except to apologize for failing to pay bills on time. She was always accompanied on appointments by her husband.

Kuntz delivered the babies at Adams homes, which were generally located deep in the Montana woods. The house was busy, with all the kids, Kuntz says, and I got the sense that her and her childrens world was in that house. They didnt get out much.

She seemed like a very private person, adds Kuntz, who has spoken to Adams a few times in the years since she separated from Rhodes. You could tell she supported what Stewart did as his wife, as a wife supports a husband. ...

In retrospect, it is clear he was very controlling. She kept it all to herself for so long.

Adams and two of her adult children say that by 2015 a year after her sixth child was born they were becoming increasingly disenchanted with Rhodes as a husband and father. He was gone for long stretches, leaving her to raise their children in an isolated part of Montana, said Adams, Dakota and Sedona.

When Rhodes was home, he belittled and berated his wife and kids, kept tabs on their whereabouts and engaged in physical abuse, according to Adams and the two children, as well as allegations included in court records filed by Adams.

In a 2018 application for a restraining order, Adams alleged Rhodes grabbed their then 13-year-old daughter by the throat. Whenever he is unhappy with my behavior (say I want to leave the house he doesnt like me to leave), he will draw his handgun (which he always wears), rack the slide, wave it around, and then point it at his own head, she wrote in the application, which was denied by a judge. It is not clear why the judge declined to grant the order.

According to Dakota and Sedona, their father didnt just promote conspiracy theories he brought them home. One night the power and phones went out, Dakota says, and his father became convinced the FBI had cut the lines, presaging a raid.

Tasha Adams, seen in the reflection of a window, ponders her time as an Oath Keepers wife and asks herself what would have happened if she had not supported her husband.

(Tailyr Irvine / For The Times)

It took us 45 minutes to pack the vehicles, says Dakota, 24. If the FBI was really coming, would they have given us that much time? We drove off and about an hour later, he was like, I guess they arent coming. So we turned around and went home to bed.

Sedona, 22, says her father once ordered the children to dig a tunnel so the family might escape if authorities raided the house. It had a plywood roof, and he had the little kids go through it to get used to it, Sedona says.

Adams and her children say it took years of enduring such behavior for her to see the truth.

Your reality gets warped. He controlled our reality, says Dakota, who succeeded on Nov. 8 in legally changing his name from Dakota Stewart Rhodes because he disdains his father.

His mother was also concerned that Rhodes could use his legal expertise and connections to keep the children. She says she put those fears aside in 2018 and filed for divorce. Rhodes moved out of the house, and appears to live out of state. The divorce case, which was filed under seal, remains unresolved, in part, because Adams says she is in debt to her lawyers.

Earning a living selling used clothes on the internet, Adams has been pecking away at a memoir and says she has been thinking about getting a college degree in extremist studies. Her goal, she says, is to teach about the dangers posed by extremist groups and their leaders.

Among the questions she thinks she can answer for students: How has Rhodes managed to avoid arrest while other Oath Keepers were indicted in the riot on conspiracy charges? In dissecting her life as an Oath Keepers wife and following coverage of the federal prosecutions, Adams says she has a theory: He is very good at getting others to take the risks.

Read more from the original source:
She helped her husband start a far-right militia group. Now the Oath Keeper's wife says she has regrets - Los Angeles Times

French commentator Eric Zemmour has risen to political notoriety off the back of anti-Muslim hatred and anti-migrant incitement before even officially announcing his candidacy in the 2022 French presidential elections.

One recent poll placed Zemmour at 16% which would translate into a second-round run off between him and current president Emmanuel Macron, knocking out far-right candidate Marine Le Pen.

Zemmour sits firmly to the right of his rival Le Pen. He has convictions for inciting racial hatred and is an open proponent of the great replacement conspiracy theory. This suggests white people are being ethnically cleansed by Muslim migrants and Jewish puppet-masters, and has emerged as the ideological underpinning for attacks including the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting in 2018 and the Christchurch Mosques shooting in 2019.

Zemmour has made various ahistorical comments, including that Vichy France, the regime that collaborated with the Nazis during the second world war, actually protected French Jews. He has also questioned the innocence of Alfred Dreyfus, who was falsely convicted for treason in a notorious example of 20th century antisemitism. His stock in trade has become to give oxygen to antisemitic conspiracy theorists.

It may therefore seem surprising that Zemmour is himself of Jewish heritage. He is the descendent of Algerian Berber Jewish immigrants.

Yonathan Arfi, vice president of the Representative Council of French Jews, describes it all as a double punishment. First, French Jews have to hear the false narratives Zemmour espouses, then they have to deal with the fact that these words have come from someone who is identified as coming from Jewish heritage himself which adds a false air of legitimacy to the claims.

There are questions over how much Zemmour actually engages with his Jewish identity but, as philosopher Bernard-Henri Lvy argues, that has become irrelevant. Despite rigorous criticism from the Jewish community, "what Mr Zemmour does, whether he likes it or not, [is] in the Jewish name.

Zemmour is not the first Jewish person to engage with far-right politics, or to run for election. In federal elections in Germany this year, for example Marcel Goldhammer, vice-chairman of Jews in the Alternative for Germany - an organisation aligned with the far-right party - stood as a candidate representing a tiny but vocal collection of radical-right German Jews.

Jewish people sign up to far-right parties for many of the same reasons as the wider population. They might oppose immigration or be ultra-nationalist in their thinking. But the fact that these movements so often thrive off the back of antisemitism and Holocaust revisionism makes Jewish involvement a puzzling hypocrisy.

Collective identity theory helps explain this puzzle. Sociologist David Snow notes that everyone carries multiple collective identities, some of which are prioritised over others. This is what is termed an identity salience hierarchy. In this case, some Jews appear to have constructed collective identities which include the far right and prioritise political ideology over other aspects of Jewish identity.

Some buy into deliberately skewed assertions that Muslim or migrant communities are the sole cause of rising antisemitism. Instead of combating far-right antisemites, they they are espousing their ani-Islamic message.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, backing Zemmour over his own daughter, reflected that the only difference between Eric and me is that he is Jewish. It is difficult to call him a Nazi or fascist. This gives him more freedom. Whether it is Zemmours intention or not, he is being presented by the French extreme right as a champion of their cause. They are absolutely clear that his Jewish identity is a helpful tool to deflect accusations of racism.

In the course of my research, I came across multiple illustrative comments on right-wing forums on 4chans politics boards, where Zemmour was described as 100% /ourjew/. One user praised Zemmour, who despite being Jewish, seems to truly love France. Another added that he recognises his Jewish identity but he doesnt let that stop him from speaking out again [sic] Jewish influence and mass immigration.

However, other extreme-right figures view Zemmour as a trojan horse for Jewish control. To them, he is living confirmation of great replacement conspiracy theories. Eric Striker a US-based alt-right propagandist (who is widely believed to be a persona) posted to his large Telegram following that Zemmour is hostile to French racial and Catholic-centred nationalism, is an open Jewish supremacist, and is using throwing out some red meat about ethnic decline to mask his actual policy proposals, which are liberal, globalist, and Zionist neo-conservativism. Despite attempts to cosy up to the far right, Zemmour will still only be seen by some as an immigrant and a Jew.

Overt Nazism is often still seen as the only indicator of far-right sentiment. But a careful public relations transformation is underway. Extremists such as Zemmour have the capacity to attract votes from portions of the electorate who support his policies, but do not consider themselves to be fascists or racists. His identity reassures them of this belief.

He has helped high-profile far-right figures in their quest to move the Overton window, making it politically acceptable to espouse hateful views in mainstream politics. Whether Zemmour ever does really end up making an electoral impact, the precedent is already being set. The strategic use of far-right philosemitism (a suspicious love of Jews based on stereotypes) remains an urgent threat for Muslim and Jewish communities alike.

Link:
Eric Zemmour: Jewish heritage is a useful tool for the French far right - The Conversation UK

Spencer and other Unite the Right organizers talked about war and violence multiple times before their event turned deadly, according to evidence presented in their civil trial Thursday.

Posted on November 4, 2021, at 7:13 p.m. ET

White nationalist Richard Spencer (center) and his supporters clash with Virginia State Police officers after the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was declared an unlawful gathering on Aug. 12, 2017.

Richard Spencer, the one-time national leader of the alt-right movement who headed a Washington, DC, think tank promoting his racist ideology, strode confidently to the witness stand in the Charlottesville federal court Thursday morning.

By lunchtime, Spencer would become frazzled and irritated as an attorney attempted to undress his suit-and-tie brand of white nationalism and expose him as a violent racist who behind closed doors worshipped Adolf Hitler, launched into antisemitic tirades, and was bent on sparking a bloody and terrible race war to create an all-white ethnostate.

He was the latest person to testify in the high-profile civil trial that will decide whether a conspiracy to commit racially motivated violence existed among 24 white supremacists including Spencer who organized the deadly Unite the Right rally on Aug. 1112, 2017. They are being sued under the 150-year-old Ku Klux Klan Act by nine plaintiffs, who are seeking not only damages for their personal injuries but to bankrupt and dismantle the white supremacists organizations.

Over the course of hours of direct examination, Michael Bloch, the plaintiffs attorney, stripped away the polished veneer that Spencer, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center has called a kind of professional racist in khakis, typically presents. Under questioning, Spencer, who was once punched in the face in a viral video that sparked widespread conversation on the ethics of punching Nazis, discussed a report he authored that focused on the bogus claim that Black people are intellectually inferior to white people. Spencer also admitted to using hate speech in private while at his apartment, which other white supremacists had dubbed the fash loft; he confirmed that fash in that context meant fascist.

White nationalist Richard Spencer speaks at the University of Florida on Oct. 19, 2017.

Bloch played a significant portion of a leaked recording of Spencer from Aug. 13, 2017, the day after a neo-Nazi rammed his car into Unite the Right counterprotesters in Charlottesville, killing activist Heather Heyer and injuring dozens of other people. In the recording, originally published by alt-right figure Milo Yiannopoulos in 2019, Spencer is heard addressing fellow white nationalists and current codefendants Nathan Damigo, Jason Kessler, and Elliott Kline. Spencer can also be heard shouting racist and antisemitic phrases.

Little fucking kikes. They get ruled by people like me. Little fucking octoroons... I fucking... My ancestors fucking enslaved those little pieces of fucking shit. I rule the fucking world, Spencer is heard saying. Those pieces of fucking shit get ruled by people like me. They look up and see a face like mine looking down at them. Thats how the fucking world works. We are going to destroy this fucking town [of Charlottesville].

Questioned by Bloch on Thursday about the recording, Spencer owned up to the remarks but claimed they didnt represent who he is.

That is me at my absolute worst. I wont dispute that thats me, because at the end of the day I have to live with that, he testified. My animal brain. Thats me as a 7-year-old. Its a 7-year-old that is probably still inside me. Im ashamed of it. That is a childish, awful version of myself.

Spencer said he doesnt believe in demeaning people to their face. But he admitted he privately used slurs to describe Jews and Black people.

Bloch showed another video of Spencer delivering a speech at a booze-soaked afterparty for a torchlight event in Charlottesville in May 2017. In that footage, Spencer is heard saying, I was born too late for the Crusades. I was born too early for the conquest of Mars. But I was born at the right time for the race war.

In yet another video from the party that was played for the court, Spencer is seen giving a Nazi salute and chanting, Sieg heil! The footage was reminiscent of the 2016 video of the white nationalist leader addressing a crowd after Donald Trumps election victory in Washington, DC, where he shouted, Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!

Spencer testified that his alt-right movement had been growing and gaining momentum at the time he began helping to organize the Unite the Right rally. But he denied that the violence at the event was planned.

A white supremacist and a counterprotester are seen fighting on Aug. 12, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia.

That issue is at the heart of the lawsuit, brought by civil rights nonprofit Integrity First for America on behalf of the plaintiffs.

Bloch, however, presented evidence that he said showed that Spencer and his codefendants had methodically planned for racist, antisemitic violence there. He showed text messages between Spencer and other alt-right figures in which they discussed how they would dominate the streets and that 2016 was the meme war, 2017 is the IRL war.

He tried to dismiss the dominate the streets remark as merely a metaphor for having a presence and engaging in [a] demonstration.

Bloch also showed that Spencer had difficulty telling the truth when it came to his communications with other white nationalists and alt-right figures in the run-up to the Unite the Right rally.

Presented with evidence of dozens of text message exchanges between himself and neo-Nazi and codefendant Christopher Cantwell after claiming they had communicated a handful of times and ate lunch once, Spencer stumbled.

Between July and August you exchanged 88 text messages with Mr. Cantwell, Bloch told him, referring to evidence submitted to the court. But you said, We shared a few text messages, seven in total. Isnt that what you told the jury?

Spencer fell silent. After a long pause, he said, I think I was referring to instances.

Originally posted here:
White Nationalist Richard Spencer Was Confronted With His Own Violent Rhetoric On The Witness Stand At The Charlottesville Trial - BuzzFeed News

A group that believes the COVID-19 pandemic is part of a plot for elites to seize global power is bringing a host of conspiracy theorists to speak this weekend at the Cajundome Convention Center.

The Red Pill Expo 2021, a creation of author and conspiracy theorist G. Edward Griffin, will meet in Lafayette Saturday and Sunday and is expected to draw 750 visitors. The event, which includes discussions on topics such as Follow the patents and you will understand COVID and Vaccine resistance, a global movement, is billed on its website as helping truth seekers understand how the world really works.

Admission ranges from nearly $400 for VIP tickets to $215 for both days, $125 for one day or $45 to live stream.

The event has been held in other cities around the country in recent years with a mission to bring people together to discuss fake narratives, fake history and fake news, according to its website.

It showcases many of the alt-right theories, a Southern Poverty Law Center spokesman said prior to the 2018 event in Washington.

The event is a marketplace for conspiracy theories, said Ryan Lenz with the SPLC.

The red-pill reference can be traced back to the film "The Matrix" in which the main character is encouraged to "take the red pill," which will open his eyes to the truth.

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Griffin, according to published reports, believes cancer is a nutritional deficiency that can be cured by taking a certain compound, and that HIV does not cause AIDS. He is a longtime member of the conservative John Birch Society.

A notable speaker planned is Dr. Lee Merritt of Nebraska, who made the claims that getting vaccinated increases your risk of death from COVID, something data does not support. Published reports indicated she claimed the pandemic is a global conspiracy aimed to exerting social control.

The presentations at the event will be based on documented information, said event director Dan Happel.

One of the things we work on very diligently is we do not provide false information, Happel said. We only provide verifiable, documented information.

The event landed in Lafayette, he noted, due to the efforts of local businessman John Cambre, who attended two previous Red Pill Expo events. Cambre is owner of one of the Ground Pati Grill and Bar, which is listed on the expos website as an exhibitor.

In a prepared statement, Cajundome officials said they do not discriminate on the basis of political agenda, music genre or artist. The event had been booked within the last six months, director Pam Deville said.

We are merely a venue, the statement read.

Read the original here:
Red Pill Expo at Cajundome this weekend to discuss COVID-19 conspiracy theories - The Advocate

All the signage and branding is forest green, decorated with a leaf emblem, for the Heartland Institutes International Conference on Climate Change. Its being held in an event room at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and attendees most of them white-haired, older gentlemen chat animatedly as they saunter past the Roman columns and statues at the famed hotel, talking about science and climate and energy.

There are retired teachers, scientists, engineers, members of ultra-conservative think tanks and lobby groups. The books being handed out for free look a little fringe or inflammatory with covers featuring war scenes and explosions but its not until the speeches begin at the opening dinner that it becomes abundantly clear that science and climate are not the primary focus of this conference.

Within about an hour, booming, charismatic speakers both at the podium and through video rope in rants about everything from critical race theory and the media to mask mandates and Marxism.

It feels like a low-level, alt-right rally which reaches its peak with a video appearance by Naomi Seibt, the young, blonde, German rock star of the climate-denial movement. Shes often referred to as the anti-Greta, as she is known for pushing views diametrically opposed to those of Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg.

Research published last week revealed that 99.9 per cent of studies now show that the climate crisis is human-driven, on a par with scientific certainty about evolution. The world is on track for temperature rises in excess of 3C this century despite a safe limit of 1.5C set by the Paris Agreement. At 3C, the world will see more hurricanes, fires, ice-cap melting and other extreme weather conditions.

This years UN climate summit, Cop26, is widely seen as the moment when countries must raise their ambitions and goals to avert climate disaster by reducing global carbon emission by roughly half by 2030.

Books, pamphlets and other literature at the Heartland Institutes October climate-change conference in Las Vegas sought to deconstruct mainstream arguments and established research

(Sheila Flynn)

It is a goal that the oil and gas industry is not taking lying down, despite its overtures to transitioning to a greener future. Since the Paris Agreement, the five largest publicly traded oil and gas majors ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, BP and Total have invested more than $1bn of shareholder funds on misleading climate-related branding and lobbying, according to InfluenceMap.

And then theres Vegas.

The Heartland Institute was traditionally funded by fossil fuels but says most financing now comes from private donations.

Dr John Cook, professor at the Centre for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University and founder of the Skeptical Science website, told The Independent last year that Heartland was one of the particularly prolific producers of climate science misinformation, whereas a lot of others tend to focus on policy.

The Chicago-based right-wing think tank bills itself as playing an essential role in the national (and increasingly international) movement for personal liberty and limited government, saying it has been the subject of unfair criticism and even libel by various liberal advocacy groups, elected officials and even Wikipedia.

At the keynote breakfast speech on the closing morning of the three-day conference, Ms Seibt, a Heartland favourite, echoes this position.

The climate debate has been driving a narrative of fear and delusion for years but now we find ourselves in a cluster of fear porn, not only from a climate crisis but also from a global health apocalypse, allegedly, Ms Seibt tells the conference, her long hair flowing over a silver jacket, her glamorous eye make-up flawless.

I find myself in a community of heroes who will not succumb to the pressures of defamation, because they know how important the truth is, she continues. We dont believe in instant gratification. We know that we need to go through a dark and dangerous tunnel to get our true freedoms back, because whats the alternative? Lying to ourselves? Putting on a mask and living the same meaningless matrix, pretentious, Marxist lives like everybody else?

The tone of Heartland literature and many presentations is persecuted but defiant and provocative. The Vegas weekend involves the presentation of the combatively-named Dauntless Purveyor of Climate Truth award, for example.

Try as they might, governments couldnt keep us locked down forever, Heartland president James Taylor proclaims in the institutes quarterly performance report being distributed at the conference.

The branding at the Heartland Institutes International Climate on Conference Change gave no hint as to the events diametrically-opposed views to mainstream climate science

(Sheila Flynn)

Now that we are regaining some of our freedoms, Heartland is sticking it to the environmental left ... The worst of the lockdowns are over, and freedom is rising again.

With Heartlands powerful impact on the global warming debate, its no wonder the Big Government left fears returning to a free and open society!

The overarching messages during the conference at least the ones related to climate posit that the Earth has always undergone extreme weather cycles. Speakers claim that climate changes are happening so gradually that a catastrophe lies only far in the future and shouldnt be cause for alarmism right now.

They argue that the cause has been hijacked by the media and the left, among other influences, to enforce an agenda of misinformation that will lead to worldwide tyranny.

I spent the past 18 months compiling iron-clad evidence about the Great Reset and about those behind it, says Justin Haskins, Heartlands editorial director, in a recorded video message.

Leaning into the camera, the bookcase behind him featuring items including an American flag, a Glenn Beck book, and a black-and-white pendant proclaiming Liberty or Death (both the colours and the phrase are associated with the alt-right movement), Mr Haskins looks every inch the zealot.

Is it a conspiracy theory? he asks of the climate crisis and left ideology. Well, there is a conspiracy. At this point, I dont think its a conspiracy theory; I think its a conspiracy fact.

Ms Seibt builds upon these ideas, proclaiming in her recorded message that social justice is a euphemism.

We believe in true, individual social connections hugging each other, being there for each other, not this cold-blooded second-hand welfare slave system, she says.

Eco-fascism is a prime example of that. We win, because we are greater than our grudges, more adamant than our adversaries, more truthful than our tormentors, and more compassionate than the cowards who want to control us with their ... censorship.

Truth is uncontrollable. The scientific method will prevail, because politicised science is not science at all. It is stagnation, and stagnation is the death of science.

Ms Seibt and other speakers call for open scientific discourse and demand their voices be heard while slamming the media repeatedly. One panellist shows to applause a photo of himself throwing a journalist out of an event. Another exhibits a political cartoon declaring the death of capitalism.

Heartland Institutes Justin Haskins delivered an impassioned video message that spoke less about climate than it did about combatting socialism, Marxism and misinformation from the left'

(Sheila Flynn)

On Saturday, one speaker and filmmaker showcasing his own documentary Climate Hustle 2 doesnt help the causes arguments for open discourse as he lambasts a reporter in the hallway outside the booked conference rooms.

Youre just an uneducated reporter, he shouts at a British television journalist querying him on scientific points, his voice rising.

Mr Morano runs a climate-change denial website in addition to directing and starring in Climate Hustle 2, narrated by Hercules: The Legendary Journeys actor Kevin Sorbo, which mocks celebrities who speak about climate.

The filmmaker himself has no scientific credentials. He does, however, have a demeanour reminiscent of Anthony Scaramucci.

Now whos the one spreading misinformation? he shouts at the journalist when she tries to delve into statistics from research. He drowns her out: You obviously have no source. Youre just repeating [yourself].

Heartland Institutes vice-president and director of communications, Jim Lakely, looks vaguely stricken by the exchange as it escalates though he later tries damage control by telling The Independent that he kind of likes a bit of argey-bargey, and the more animation the better.

Not everyone at the conference is antagonistic, though. One attendee is an investment manager from Connecticut who, while sceptical of certain climate-crisis claims, says he came to the event because climate and energy are so intertwined with financial markets.

Another, George Taylor, tells The Independent he has PhDs in both mathematics and computer science and is more interested in exploring energy sources than listening to diatribes unsupported by facts.

The whole point is to get your message to the other person and have them actually understand something they could walk away with, Mr Taylor, based in Reno, tells The Independent describing the previous nights volatile scene between filmmaker Mr Morano and the journalist as unproductive.

Rather than yelling and screaming and making it political, lets get down to some numbers and some facts, he tells The Independent, after detailing how a Nevada friend gave him grief about attending the conference. (She only reads liberal sources like The Washington Post, he adds.)

There may be a significant amount that we dont know, so were actually taking a guess and deciding to what degree are we going to take preventative action to ward off what may be a problem ... sometimes, you have to act in the absence of perfect knowledge.

Amidst that uncertainty, however, Mr Taylor concedes that it would be more beneficial to impart the facts without yelling and screaming and ranting.

The Heartland Institutes October Climate Conference in Las Vegas seemed more focused on political aims than environmental concerns

(Sheila Flynn)

Regardless of what some consider the fringe element of climate science, however, many of the attendees the ones less concerned with politics and more interested in research do seem to have their hearts in the right place. They feel they genuinely are environmental activists but on a whole different plane from the mainstream.

Everyone here is smart and everyone is sincere, the wife of one panellist tells The Independent.

What that sincerity might lead to, however after the weekends near-palpable undercurrent of right-wing ideology remains in doubt.

Heartlands Mr Haskins says: Beneath the glowing stars-and-stripes veneer is a terminally ill superpower teetering on the edge and the worst part is our most disruptive, dangerous days still lie ahead.

At lavish cocktail parties in European resort towns and in the boardrooms of the worlds largest corporations, powerful and influential leaders are putting the finishing touches on the vast infrastructure need to alter our communities forever.

The calls to action over the weekend are repeatedly spelled out: Run for office. Push back.

Resist.

Our open, free minds are untouchable in the end therefore panic will persist until we resist, Ms Seibt tells rapt listeners.

And we resist now.

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Welcome to anti-Cop26: The climate-change denial expo in Vegas where attendees talk anything but science - The Independent