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This week, Trump praised the police murder of anti-racist #Portland protester Michael Reinoeh while promoting tweets from racist Holocaust revisionist Styxhexenhammer666 + far-Right YouTuber Lauren Southern, both of whom work closely with white nationalists + neo-Nazis. A thread.
According to a report from the New York Times, US Marshalls and local police may have open fire and shot Portland activist Michael Reinoeh without even identifying themselves as law enforcement or without seeing a weapon. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/13/us/michael-reinoehl-antifa-portland-shooting.html
Reinoeh was on the run after fatally shooting a member of the far-Right group Patriot Prayer in what he calls self-defense after hundreds of far-Right Trump supporters flooded into #Portland + attacked people on the street with projectiles + other weapons. https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7g8vb/man-linked-to-killing-at-a-portland-protest-says-he-acted-in-self-defense
At least 21 witnesses have stated that "they had not heard the police identify themselves or give any commands before opening fire. Five witnesses said the shooting began as soon as the task force vehicles arrived and that Reinoehl appeared unarmed." https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/10/14/no-police-warning-in-antifa-activist-shooting-witnesses
Around the same time it was reveled that the DHS was encourage people in the government to back far-Right militia killer Kyle Rittenhouse with supportive statements. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/homeland-security-officials-given-talking-points-supportive-of-kyle-rittenhouse-1069621/
Trump also RTed a Tweet from far-Right and racist conspiracy theorist Styxhexenhammer666, also known as Tarl Warwick.
Here's Warwick sharing his ideas about the Holocaust and how he doesn't think it happened like "they" say it does. https://twitter.com/classiclib3ral/status/951386159472693249?s=20
Warwick often does videos with neo-Nazis, white nationalists, and other racists such as Richard Spencer and Red ICE TV.
Trump also boosted Lauren Southern, known for promoting Alt-Right + white nationalist talking points, especially around immigration. Southern worked with the Identitarian + white nationalist group, Generation Identity, which attacked migrants at sea. https://thenewinquiry.com/fash-at-sea/
Here's Lauren Southern reppin MAGA in Berkeley in 2017, hanging out with her buddies Nathan Damigo, ex-con and founder of Identity Evorpa, a neo-Nazi group which marched in Charlottesville and white supremacist Johnny "Monoxide," who was supposed to speak at Unite the Right.
Trump has also boosted the false far-Right conspiracy theory that a private security guard who shot and killed a far-Right Trump supporter at a Patriot rally was in-fact some sort of deep cover antifa agent. https://theintercept.com/2020/10/12/far-right-twitter-trolls-wont-admit-wrong-killing-patriot-denver/
Trump has even boosted Tweets from a pro-MAGA UFC fighter giving tips on how to beat up "hooligans and antifa like individuals."
The Trump administration has always been a coalition: a collection of far-Right Libertarians, Dominionist Evangelicals, Nativist anti-immigrant activists, CEOs from the fossil fuel industry, and also sections of the Alt-Right. https://www.newsweek.com/steve-bannon-targeted-incels-manipulate-cambridge-analytica-whistleblower-christopher-wylie-1468399
In 2016 and 2017, Steve Bannon and Milo through Brietbart and backed by the billionaire Mercer family attempted to whitewash the Alt-Right and use it as the online foot-soldiers for the Trump campaign. Spencer explains: https://twitter.com/IGD_News/status/1183953229828149249?s=20
According to former DHS agents, Trump refused to distance himself from white nationalist and far-Right groups, even after high profile mass causality attacks such as in Pittsburgh and El Paso. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2020/10/13/trump-threatens-american-safety-former-dhs-secretary-column/5960384002/
According to another DHS whistleblower, DHS leaders also instructed staff to play up the threat of anarchist + antifascist groups while downplaying threat for far-Right + white nationalist groups - contradicting information produced by the government. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/10/911349849/dhs-whisleblower-says-he-was-ordered-to-highlight-leftist-groups-threats
Trump has continued this trajectory with his embrace of the anti-Semitic Qanon conspiracy. As he is rejected by a growing number of working-class people in the wake of the pandemic, Trump continues to rely on his violent far-Right base for support. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/15/rather-than-condemn-qanon-conspiracy-theory-trump-elevates-its-dangerous-central-assertion/
Just as Trump needed sections of the Alt-Right to support him in the run-up to the 2016 election, in 2020 he needs far-Right, militia, Patriot, and Proud Boy groups to be his foot soldiers as the GOP engages in a broad campaign of voter suppression. https://www.businessinsider.com/virginia-trump-supporters-intimidated-voters-disrupt-early-voting-2020-9
But Trump has also found a friend among the class of Centrist pundits - who are seemingly more afraid about the rise of working-class movements, strike activity, and grassroots organizing than they are of fascism. https://fair.org/home/in-month-after-charlottesville-papers-spent-as-much-time-condemning-anti-nazis-as-nazis/
The fact that politicians must continue to rely on conspiracy theories + outright manipulation of their base speaks to a fundamental truth about the present order: it's falling apart + in the breakdown, only seems capable of doubling down on repression. https://itsgoingdown.org/against-trumps-coup-fascist-boogaloo-towards-a-general-strike/
As modern life continues to be gripped by crisis after crisis and the increasing threat of climate change looms - the need for the exploited and excluded to take their lives, destinies, and struggles into their own hands is greater than ever.
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