Read on Twitter
Some groups to familiarize yourself with as the Kenosha situation gathers steam:
"BLM" -> Locals plus a large contingent of Chicago-area organizers, they may use some form of colored armband.
"medics" -> Usually anarchist in political sympathy, often actual paramedics.
"BLM" -> Locals plus a large contingent of Chicago-area organizers, they may use some form of colored armband.
"medics" -> Usually anarchist in political sympathy, often actual paramedics.
"boogboi(s)" -> Mostly bottom middle of the political compass libertarian, generally supportive of the protesters and action against cops and government buildings, not at all supportive of private property destruction. May or may not wear Hawaiian or floral shirts.
"press" -> When things get hot reporters usually start moving in packs so they don't get picked off by arrest teams or caught in crossfire. This means that they're an active element on the riot chessboard, and they often impact the flow of an action.
"armed citizens" -> Anybody out there with a gun, inclusive of aforementioned boogbois but also including right wing paramilitaries from out of town and organic groups of local or regional people with guns. Motivations may range from protecting businesses to shooting protesters.
"John Brown Gun Club" / "SRA" -> Organized leftist paramilitaries. We know there are a bunch of them in the area, and they were out in Kalamazoo recently. There were a few token anarchists with rifles and pistols around the periphery of the action last night, expect more tonight.
If this was happening in any other country you'd know exactly what to call it.
One of the primary problems that we're going to have tonight is identification. All this tactical gear looks the same, so it's not easy to figure out who is who and what they're doing, especially if fireworks (literal or figurative) are going off.
This has the potential to be one of the biggest mass casualty events in modern US history. https://twitter.com/beehive1027/status/1298437310451605506
If you are in #Kenosha you need to get into a basement or a central room ASAP.
There are multiple terrorist threats coming from heavily armed right-wing groups that are streaming into the city.
Rifle rounds go through walls like butter, you do not want to catch a stray.
There are multiple terrorist threats coming from heavily armed right-wing groups that are streaming into the city.
Rifle rounds go through walls like butter, you do not want to catch a stray.
As has been noted elsewhere the wannabe Navy SEAL crowd is out in force on Twitter tonight as well. If people start shooting it could activate tryhards everywhere. https://twitter.com/kalamojakka/status/1298441855412187139
To underscore how useless Kenosha police have been, look at how they shoot their own fence trying to hit a guy right in front of their faces: https://twitter.com/BGOnTheScene/status/1298442813022109697
Twitter is being Weibo'd in subtle ways around this, it looks like threads are breaking on certain keywords to keep people from following long-running event streams. Gonna test this in some other threads.
Also hearing reports from people on IG that feeds are being arbitrarily cut off. Would not be surprised if they shut down social media posts or other forms of coordination. Not that it matters for any of the organized militias who all have Baofengs.
"As long as you fuck with the government and not with each other, we are with you!" https://twitter.com/selfdeclaredref/status/1298465168486260748
Note the colorful shirts. The fact that these guys are standing there may be preventing a massacre. Any right-wingers who roll in will have a lot of rifles to deal with. Lots of potential for mistaken identity however.
Rumors of a chemical attack pinging around. https://twitter.com/selfdeclaredref/status/1298470649921441792
These guys are camping out on the roofs of businesses, deterrent seems to be working. https://twitter.com/ElijahSchaffer/status/1298471079837605888
Boogboi contingent moving with the protesters is pulling double duty as heavily armed deterrent / human shields against the groups of right-wingers on the periphery and as a sort of adult supervision for protesters who have started lighting fires. https://twitter.com/ElijahSchaffer/status/1298473653894549505
Expect this to be a focal point of disagreement between the boogbois, some of the bad actors among the BLM protesters, and any opportunists rolling with the march.
What sounds like a handgun going off a few minutes ago. At this rate it's going to be a miracle if nobody catches a bullet tonight. https://twitter.com/block_captain1/status/1298469313867898880
Something of a chain of command developing among the boogbois as yelling starts between them and people who want to start burning stuff. https://twitter.com/Julio_Rosas11/status/1298474730966659072
Fire exchanged about 15-20 mins back from this Tweet's timestamp, at least one guy hit really bad with a rifle, there was an exchange of fire out of view of this feed but the camera did catch most of the people coming and going from the street
The exact set of problems with force on force legibility that I discussed above is playing out in real time.
Confirmed on the feed that both shooter and target were white guys.
A shooting may have taken place immediately before, one of the people on the feed claims that a looter was shot in the head.
Reviewed the video again, it looks like a group of guys with rifles are being chased by some antifa, one of the antifa throws a metal object, there's some commotion that isn't visible from the angle, then a guy gets shot. Not certain, but that's what the feed look like.
This is, believe it or not, nowhere near the worst case scenario. Boogbois and neo-Nazi groups have been trading threats for months and an open firefight between the two could annihilate a neighborhood.
Back in January the boogboi and mainline conservative militia both declared that they'd shoot any Nazis that started shit at the Richmond rally. The FBI scooped a group of White ethnats who were on their way to do just that.
Something that needs to be front of mind is that these Aryan nuts keep getting caught with homemade explosives of roughly the same capabilities as a military hand grenade. If they got into a serious firefight they'd probably use those explosives alongside molotov cocktails.
Hope we get another angle on the earlier parking lot shooting outside the hospital, it would be good see what went down better. Whoever pulled the trigger would be smart to get in touch with the authorities ASAP.
Extremely gnarly video, this may have been immediately before the parking lot shooting. Several people hit, one guy by the cameraman got clipped in the arm and is screaming for a medic. https://twitter.com/selfdeclaredref/status/1298489882566955009
Threading this in: https://twitter.com/mattparlmer/status/1298499341972316162
The guys doing the shooting here should have never put themselves in the position of being that many men down, let alone firing into a crowd wildly.
Still unclear who they are or what led up to the street confrontation. It's a damn good thing they were the only militia group on that street, if people had started trading shots there would have been a massacre.
Better angle on the street shooting (before parking lot shooting), looks at first like self defense as he's being mobbed, BUT there's allegedly a shooting that happened up the road that he may have been responsible for. Still looking for video. https://twitter.com/fascistanista/status/1298497506620432384
This is as chaotic as any developing situation in a warzone overseas.
Graphic example of what rifles do. https://twitter.com/a_r_j_u_n_e/status/1298508009501466626
Here's the main non-commerical stream people have been pulling from, still not entirely clear what happens but this is the definitive order of events.
This is sharp-tongued but basically true. The lack of training and common sense is palpable on all sides. Nobody has a clue what's going on. https://twitter.com/TheAgeofShoddy/status/1298511159838928897
The term "Roof Kenoshan" is circulating among various militia accounts right now.
Boogbois are (plausibly) disavowing the green shirt guy who did all the shooting, they say they don't know him and that they were a mile and a half away when the shooting started.
I've been tracking this group of boogbois for a bit, this guy doesn't look like one of them and got himself caught up in some stuff that would be highly uncharacteristic of the group that "cowboy boots" was leading tonight.
That group has pulled out of town and is encouraging all the other rooftop guys to get their people out as well. It looks like at least some of the militias are pulling out.
Won't dox any of the sources where I'm picking this up from, but they aren't hard to find on Instagram if you want to do the digging yourself.
The groups I track closely are calling it a night so I probably will as well. Gonna update this thread sometime tomorrow with overnight reactions from the various militia groups at play here. Tonight may have activated a lot of people.
