The Truth About 'The Truth About Blackfish'

It's never easy, coming in from the outside of an emotional debate over a popular public entertainment -- the kind that performing killer whales provide -- to adequately judge that's debate's real merits, such as the one over orca captivity that has been inspired by the documentary Blackfish. Both sides of the debate claim to own real expertise the subject, so it often comes down to a matter of evaluating the competing facts.

It's always a dead giveaway, however, as to the adequacy of each side's arguments when one of the sides decides not to really engage in the facts but chooses instead to emphasize character assassination of the opposing side.

And that is precisely how the Blackfish debate has unfolded. The documentary's producers and backers, while handling a deeply emotional subject with grace and reserve, have hewn to the facts -- as did their film.

Sea World, on the other hand, has run and hidden: first refusing to participate in the film, then refusing even to come on CNN when asked, refusing any public accountability for its practices. Its few media defenders, rather than debate facts, have simply indulged in mindless bullying.

And when it finally did go public with its response to the film, it did so in a completely non-transparent way -- undertaking a closed-shop public-relations campaign predicated around websites, videos, and ads. And the primary subject of that campaign has not been an effort to rebut the factual issues raised by the film, but an attack on the people involved in the film and an attempt to impugn their motives. A smear campaign.

Which is why, at a deep level, SeaWorld is losing. It is now fighting off legislative attempts to outlaw orca captivity. Its stock has been in decline. Its chief stockholder, Blackstone Group, recently sold off large shares. More importantly, its attendance figures are in decline, with no sign that the trend will be reversing anytime soon. Indeed, the more people who see Blackfish the more likely it is to accelerate.

This campaign is embodied by SeaWorld's web-based effort at responding to the film, namely, its website titled "The Truth About Blackfish."

At first glance, the site looks on its slick surface like a sincere attempt to humanize the people who still work at Sea World. But when you start going through its actual content, what quickly emerges is not a humanizing of Sea World but -- beyond an array of picked nits and distorted "facts" -- the website is in fact mostly a relentless smear of the people who spoke up in the film.

See, for instance, the third point in its array of supposed "facts":

The film also relies on animal rights activists masquerading as scientists: The film relies heavily on the dubious reflections of scientists who have aggressively campaigned against marine mammal display for decades, and have no expertise with killer whale behavior in captivity.  These scientists include Howard Garrett, Lori Marino and Ken Balcomb. Mr. Garrett, along with cast members Samantha Berg and Carol Ray, joined with PETA in a previously filed lawsuit against SeaWorld. In this lawsuit, they equated SeaWorld’s work with killer whales as slavery under the 13th Amendment. Although their case was promptly dismissed by the Court, their anti-captivity bias is obvious.  Likewise, the film relies on the statements of David Duffus, a professor of geography and purported expert in the area of killer whale behavior, whom Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Judge Kenneth Welsch found “has no expertise in the training of captive killer whales.”  

So, which is it: Are they scientists, or only activists? In fact, every single one of the people that the site lists as "animal rights activists posing as scientists" is, yes, a scientist. Real scientists, not fake or -- perhaps worse yet -- corporate ones. Which, as you'll note, the entirety of the rest of the paragraph admits, while qualifying that these scientists have no expertise in captive whales. But Garrett and Balcomb, in fact, have abundant experience with killer-whale behavior in the wild. Indeed, Ken Balcomb is one of the most respected wild orca researchers in the world, having carefully catalogued the populations and behaviors of the Pacific Northwest's Southern Resident killer whales for the past forty years. His Center for Whale Research is recognized around the world as one of the leading authorities on the species.

Likewise, Lori Marino is one of the most respected (and celebrated) specialists in cetacean neurology in the world, having been one of the scientists who ascertained that dolphins have mirror self-recognition. It's true that she has not worked with live killer whales, though it should be noted that their morphology is quite similar to that of the bottlenose dolphins with whom she has extensive experience. More important, she is one of the only scientists to have participated in an MRI study of a killer-whale brain -- which in fact is what she came on Blackfish to talk about.

But that also brings up the other aspect of how SeaWorld smears these and other scientists who have spoken, by dismissing them as activists. Because Lori Marino also is a key faculty member of the Emory Center for Ethics -- one of the nation's leading scientific-ethics think tanks, a place where scientists, especially biologists, go to think about the ethical dimensions and ramifications of their work.

Here's how "The Truth About Blackfish" concludes, describing Marino's assessments:

All of the falsehoods and misleading techniques in Blackfish are employed in the service of the film’s obvious bias, one that is best revealed near the end of Blackfish by a neuroscientist with no known expertise in killer whales. She claims that all killer whales in captivity are “emotionally destroyed,” and “ticking time bombs.” These are not the words of science, and indeed, there is not a shred of scientific support for them.  Rather, they are the words of animal rights activists whose agenda the film’s many falsehoods were designed to advance. They reveal “Blackfish” not as an objective documentary, but as propaganda.  

This obviates the nature of scientific ethics, which SeaWorld seems to believe is only valid when it's done on behalf of a corporate interest. When Marino speaks out about the ethics of orca captivity, she does as someone bound by the nature of her work to consider whether orca captivity is the right thing to do on a purely scientific basis. And on that basis, SeaWorld loses. It is not even close. And it is the same for all the other scientists that SeaWorld tries to smear this way: They speak out not because they are loopy-eyed ideologues, but because their extensive scientific experience with these animals compels them to speak up about what they know.

The same can be said of the several former SeaWorld trainers who appeared in the film, describing the company's dubious practices. These are people who "The Truth About Blackfish" devotes considerable energy to attacking, largely on the basis that their credentials were not extensive enough to speak authoritatively. Most of these trainers and the film's producers have replied to these smears adequately, but it shouldn't be necessary; SeaWorld condemns itself simply by going this route, rather than addressing the content what these trainers had to say to the cameras.

Moreover, on that score, SeaWorld's attempts at responding on a factual basis are not only woefully inadequate, they are riddled with falsehoods, inaccuracies and distortions.

The most egregious of these, of course, is its ongoing claim that the lifespan of captive orcas is similar to, or perhaps even longer than, that of wild orcas. In order to make this claim, SeaWorld has to rig its statistics by including only SeaWorld orcas in its database, and then only deaths that have occurred in the past 15 years. Considering that it, and many other marine parks, have held many more orcas over the nearly fifty years they have been in business, that's an absurdly skewed database.

Moreover, while it has managed to buffalo a few journalists into believing that "scientists don't really know" the lifespans of wild orcas, the data that have been collected so far justify scientists' widespread confidence that the lifespans we see in the well-studied Pacific Northwest orcas are reasonably representative of their lifespans in other habitats. There are no scientists who study wild orcas who believe that captive lifespans are even close to equivalent, and indeed the real data demonstrates conclusively that this is the case.

And that is reflective of SeaWorld's ignorant and fundamentally unscientific approach to the facts. In the "detailed analysis" of Blackfish it offers, it actually makes the assertion that that adult orcas must leave their mothers in the wild, because, as they write, "if no adult offspring ever leave their mother, there would be no genetic diversity necessary for survival or separate pods of killer whales."

This, to put it nicely, is monumental, risible ignorance. In fact, among resident fish-eating killer whales, both and female orcas remain with their mothers their entire lives, forming extremely tight social circles; they overcome the genetic-diversity issue by primarily mating with resident orcas from other pods. This is well-established scientific fact, and the fact that SeaWorld says Blackfish "offers no scientific basis for this statement" and that "SeaWorld is aware of none" demonstrates its only abysmal understanding of the animals in its care.

This kind of nonsensical distortion and afactuality pervades "The Truth About Blackfish". Another deceptive claim on the website is one of its most prominent:

Through stock footage and video mismatched to the narrative, the film implies that SeaWorld collects killer whales from the wild and separates mothers and calves.  NEITHER IS TRUE.

But in fact, SeaWorld manages to obtain orcas for its inventory that are "rescued" from the wild, because as the dominant figure in the captive-orca industry, it is able to access any orcas that are captured for other venues. A classic case of this is Morgan, the wild orca calf recently rescued in the Netherlands; she was placed temporarily at Loro Parque off the coast of Spain until a court could determine her disposition. In the interim, as Gabriella Cowperthwaite noted in an interview, SeaWorld began listing her as one of its corporate "assets." Sure enough, the Dutch court eventually concluded that Morgan was legally in their possession. Moreover, there has been a recent surge in captures of wild orcas that has significantly increased the overall pool of captive orcas, and some of the recent captures are almost certain to fall within its corporate sphere eventually.

Even more risible was SeaWorld's claim that it doesn't separate mother orcas and their calves. This is only true if by "calves" you mean young under one year of age. But in fact SeaWorld regularly and with impunity separates mothers and their offspring -- which, as we just noted, is a completely unnatural occurrence in the wild. Moreover, the assertion isn't even true all of the time for one-year-old calves; SeaWorld has a long track record of separating mothers and calves at birth, and even more often when they become older than a year. Indeed, the orca and calf whose image illustrates SeaWorld's assertion were, as a matter of fact, separated when the youngster was four.

Some simply fly in the face of what we know already. For instance, there's this: 

The film falsely suggests that SeaWorld “blamed” Ms. Brancheau for her death.  We have never done that. She was our colleague and we mourn her loss to this day.  The film, however, does blame Ms. Brancheau, and it accomplishes this through former trainers with little or no relevant experience. These trainers were not present on the day she died, and callously presume to critique her interaction with Tilikum. 

Yet anyone who has seen the film knows that this is simply, baldly false. Not only does the documentary provide two clear examples of SeaWorld employees and spokesmen blaming Brancheau for her own death, the speculation by trainers about the events leading up to her death were a far cry from these blatant examples of victim-blaming.

And as if to underscore that blaming Brancheau was in fact the official company line for the better part of a year at SeaWorld, the company's chief investor -- Blackstone Group chairman Stephen Schwarzman -- went on CNBC (after "The Truth About Blackfish" made these claims) and in fact blamed Brancheau for her own death. Challenged about SeaWorld's stock, Schwarzman told his host that the company had only "had one safety lapse -- interestingly, with a situation where the person involved violated all the safety rules that we had."

The company quickly tried to backtrack, saying that Schwarzman had "misspoken," explaining that "his comments did not accurately reflect the facts of the accident or SeaWorld’s longstanding position on it."

Right.

Then there is the matter of Tilikum himself, the killer whale who is the focal point of the film. SeaWorld tries to pretend that he's just fine and healthy:

What clearly is supported by the facts is that prior to Ms. Brancheau’s accident in 2010, Tilikum had engaged in numerous interactions with trainers and veterinarians safely and without incident over a period of 18 years. Tilikum remains at SeaWorld, where he cooperates with trainers, socializes with other killer whales and our guests.  

The reality that I, and other observers, have seen at Sea World Orlando is quite different for Tilikum. The park continues to keep him socially separated from most of the other whales, allowing him only the company of other males, usually one at a time, but he spends most of his days floating in more or less one place.

This is where SeaWorld's campaign not only fails, but backfires utterly. Rather than persuading its core audience -- average Americans, people who appreciate science and reason and nature, people inclined to support a conservation ethic and the humane treatment of animals -- that what it is doing is the right thing, it spend all of its energy trying to make its critics out to be bad people. And after awhile, that kind of campaign just become a kind of mirror: Everyone outside of the company can see that they are projecting.

Certainly, the facts are not on their side. The reality is that the scientific evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that orcas are not animals that are fit for captivity, and ethically speaking, continuing the practice has to be considered inhumane. Scientist Naomi Rose -- yes, she's also one of those experts they choose to dismiss as an "activist" -- has compiled a white paper that lays out the case. 

Longevity/survival rates/mortality
In 1995, Small and DeMaster published a peer-reviewed paper on the survivorship rates of several captive marine mammal species.This paper showed that, through the end of 1992 (the last year for which a complete set of annual data  was available) orcas had significantly lower annual survival rates in captivity than in the wild. Their annual mortality rate (the inverse of survivorship) was more than two and a half times higher in captivity than in the wild. Thus to date the maximum lifespan of captive orcas has matched the mean life expectancy of wild orcas. As a corollary, very few captive orcas who have died achieved the mean life expectancy of wild orcas.

... The infant mortality rate in captivity (“infant” defined here as an animal six months of age or younger, including near- to full-term pregnancies where the calf does not survive birth [stillbirths]) is approximately 50%.

Age distribution

Of more than 130 wild-caught orcas held for public display, only 13 survive in oceanaria around the world. Nine of these are older than the vast majority of captive orcas who have died and, given that they represent less than 10% of the wild-caught animals, should be considered outside the norm in terms of captive longevity. The remaining 29 living captive orcas are captive-born and therefore younger than 25 (with the death of Kalina, the oldest living captive-born orca is now Orkid, aged 23 years). Indeed, 17 of the surviving captive-born orcas are younger than 11 years of age.

Fin Collapse

All captive male orcas have collapsed dorsal fins as adults, most completely folded over the back. Because of their visibility, these fins tend to draw attention and questions from the public. SeaWorld attempts to characterize the fully collapsed dorsal fins of its male orcas as a normal phenomenon; however, in the wild, only 1-5% of male orcas in some populations (and none in others) have fully collapsed dorsal fins.

Causes of Death

The most common causes of death in captive orcas, wild-caught or captive-born, are pneumonia, septicemia, and other types of infection. That many infections turn lethal in captive orcas highlights the fact that wildlife often does not manifest clinical signs of illness until it is too late for treatment. This raises the logical question of whether veterinary care provides a significant advantage to captive wildlife. Clearly it helps some animals, but others die before treatment can be started or take effect.

Dental health

The high rate of lethal infection may also be a function of poor dental health. Captive orcas routinely show damaged dentition, primarily broken and worn teeth with the pulp exposed. This is in contrast to wild orcas: many show little or no tooth wear, while those who do tend to specialize in prey with abrasive morphology. Broken teeth in wild orcas are rare.

Aberrant behavior

The only recorded fatal attack by one orca on another occurred in captivity. Incompatibility among captive orcas is frequent, with certain individuals bullied by others, resulting in lacerations and other wounds, and eventually needing separation from dominant individuals. In the wild, aggression has been only rarely observed; where it was, serious injuries did not result.

Human injuries and deaths

Throughout recorded history, there have been no reliable reports of wild orcas killing a human being. In contrast, four people have been killed by captive orcas. Three orcas drowned a part-time trainer in 199190. One of these three was involved in the death of a member of the public eight years later and this same whale killed his long-time trainer 11 years later. A fourth whale killed his trainer only nine weeks earlier.

There have been very few reports of serious injuries inflicted by wild orcas on humans; one surfer required stitches in his leg in 1972. The few other reported incidents were minor and resulted in little or no injury. In contrast, there have been dozens of significant incidents between people and captive orcas, including serious injuries requiring hospitalization, throughout the 47 years this species has been on public display.

The obvious conclusion is clear cut and unambiguous:

Considering orca natural history, it is unsurprising that orcas do not thrive in captivity. They are kin-bonded creatures, with a long dependency period on the mother and life-long family ties to her, their siblings and more distant relations. When in captivity, they are kept in artificial social groups with no resemblance to those in nature. They are cooperative predators, whose home ranges are hundreds if not thousands of square kilometers in size, and who can and often do swim almost 200 kilometers in a day. When in captivity, they are made to exist inside a comparatively small concrete enclosure, less than one ten-thousandth of normal habitat size.

Captivity cannot adequately provide for such large, social, wide-ranging predators. A captive orca bears little resemblance to a wild one and the evidence is mounting that these animals, raised within or born into profoundly abnormal circumstances, are themselves abnormal. However, for 47years oceanaria holding orcas have been telling the public that captive orcas thrive and indeed that they might even be better off in human care than facing the challenges of a wild existence. The facts show otherwise.

This is the truth about SeaWorld and its PR counteroffensive against Blackfish: It cannot face the facts, because the facts mean they have to completely rethink their business model (and Rose has some ideas about that, too).





Rather than address the real issues underlying the matter, it chooses to attack the people involved and touting their business credentials; their chief argument seems to be that they are better people -- even while they lie through their teeth to us at every turn, whether it's telling people that captive orcas live as long as wild whiles, or claiming to be really all about conserving orcas in the wild.

Indeed, the most laughable part in all this comes when Sea World tries to claim it is also a leader in conservation and wildlife recovery efforts for the animals in its care. That may be true of Florida manatees, but it is simply a flat-out lie when it comes to orcas.

One thing we know for a fact about SeaWorld: Even though it preaches a "conservation message" to people who come to their theme parks, it does almost nothing of consequence in the real world to assist in the conservation of wild killer whales.

When people at those parks ask what they can do to help killer whales in the wild, they are given generic answers such as watching what lawn fertilizer they use, or not littering, or assisting in beach cleanups. In the video above, you can hear a guide telling children that those are the steps they should take at home to help wild orcas.

But these things do little if anything at all to actually help killer whales in the wild. Indeed, you will find only scant references at Sea World parks to the only officially endangered population of killer whales -- the Southern Resident population of the Salish Sea. And if you do happen to hear about them, you will be told that their chief threat is boats and pollution.

What you will not be told is that in reality, the Southern Residents face a doubly whammy. The first whammy came in the loss of over a third of its historic population during the period 1964-75, when SeaWorld and its cohorts founded the captive-orca industry by removing some fifty resident killer whales from Puget Sound waters. Since then, its population has wavered between seventy and a hundred whales -- we are currently at 81 -- in large part because of the second whammy: a lack of salmon, particularly the Chinook salmon that comprise their preferred diet.

Recovering the orca population is necessarily focused on restoring our salmon runs, both in the Salish Sea and in the Columbia River and elsewhere, including Northern California. It is a long and difficult fight, one in which the progress has been slow, in large part because of a lack of financial support for salmon restoration.

Where has Sea World been in all this? Nowhere. They have not funded orca-population studies or censuses, let alone communications and ship-noise studies that are needed. We did see them briefly during the Springer episode, when SeaWorld lent local scientists the use of a diagnostic lab and an overseeing veterinarian to test a sample of Springer's blood before she was transported north and successfully reunited with her familial pod. For that, they now claim credit for the entire project.


There has been some recent research at SeaWorld that actually helps advance our knowledge of killer whales. For instance, researchers there have established recently that dialects in killer whales are in fact learned behaviors. There has also been some recent impressive work on the energy orcas expend in the process of swimming. One could argue that this research is long overdue, but at least SeaWorld is now undertaking research that could actually help conserve orcas in the wild -- something that was not true for many years.


If you scroll around "The Truth About Blackfish" and SeaWorld's website, you'll find a page full of videos "featuring employees talking about the park’s animal conservation and rescue efforts, as well as its care for its animals and how interactions with them inspire visitors." This is all very heart-warming. But it's as phony as a three-dollar bill. In fact, SeaWorld spends well under 1 percent of its annual revenues on conservation efforts. 

If SeaWorld were serious about assisting orcas -- and serious about their claims to being a conservation-oriented organization -- they would be a major presence in the Northwest in the long hard battle to restore our salmon and save our killer whales. Instead, they are nowhere to be seen -- too busy teaching orcas to breach in triplicate and rolling in the revenue stream that creates.

They also specialize in lying about and smearing the people who are in fact actively engaged in the work of saving wild killer whales in their native habitat. This tawdry public-relations effort is just another iteration of what we have seen from them all along.

It's telling enough that when Blackfish's filmmakers challenged SeaWorld to a public debate, they simply refused. They knew, of course, that they would lose. It's even more telling that, when SeaWorld has gone to court on these issues -- as it has with the OSHA ruling ordering its trainers to stay out of the water with killer whales, the end result of Dawn Brancheau's death -- it in fact loses, as it did recently, once again. 

At some point, it will have to figure all this out. But by then, it may well be too late for it to pull out of its self-inflicted death spiral.

Militiamen and Oath Keepers Drew Weapons, Threatened to Kill Each Other

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

The right-wing media tried to sell Americans on the idea that the antigovernment “Patriots” and militiamen who gathered to block the roundup of Cliven Bundy’s illegally grazing cattle in Nevada were well-meaning lovers of liberty. However, Bundy’s most ardent defenders have revealed themselves to be a volatile collection of hotheaded, paranoid men (and a few women) with big egos and even bigger guns.

The situation at the Bundy ranch, where armed militiamen and “Patriots” are camped out, has deteriorated so badly that competing factions apparently drew weapons on one another during heated arguments.

We wrote on Wednesday about how tensions flared when a paranoid rumor of an imminent drone strike on the encampment began circulating. The team that primarily circulated the drone-strike rumor – Stewart Rhodes’ Oath Keepers – also began advising people to pull out, which sparked the wrath of militiamen.
Those militiamen voted to oust the Oath Keepers, and a couple even spoke of shooting Rhodes and his men in the back, which they deemed the proper battlefield treatment of “deserters”.

Now Rhodes has replied to their accusations in a video in which he teamed up with fellow Oath Keepers Steve Homan, Robert Casillas and Brandon Ropolla (the latter of whom are also affiliated with Mike Vanderboegh’s so-called “III Percent” movement) to attack the “nutcases” that Rhodes said have assumed control of the militia camp at the Bundy Ranch.

Rhodes painted an unflattering portrait of volatile “crazies” at the camp. Most strikingly, Rhodes described some of the threats of violence that have bubbled up to the surface at the camp:

RHODES: Now, when [John] Bidler was dropped on his butt– John Bidler– another guy — some Mountain Man militia guy, put his hand on his gun and said, “I dare ya to draw — draw motherfucker, I’m gonna kill ya.” I’m sorry to cuss but that’s what he said. So they were being threatened. Guys with hands on their guns threatening them. That’s why we told them to get out of there. We knew the situation was this close from being a gunfight, right there inside the camp.

Rhodes later described another close call when guns were drawn and people very nearly shot:

RHODES: And this is the tip of the iceberg of the cluster out there. One of our guys from Montana, Rick Delap, who was there from the beginning — he’s been out there for two weeks in the dirt – the day of this confrontation, I come to find out he had to draw on somebody. Two of the Mountain Men guys came up to him — were aggressing on him. Then one of them ran back to his vehicle and grabbed an AR and came back with an AR in his hand and Rick had to draw on him. And those two ran off. That was this close from Rick having to shoot that ding-a-ling. If that guy had raised his barrel, Rick would have had no choice but to shoot him.

TeamSarah4Choice at Daily Kos has been closely monitoring the videos emerging from the scene in Nevada and promptly posted the video with transcripts. As she points out, there was actual violence at the camp when angry young men knocked two elderly veterans, including Steve Homan, to the ground. Homan described it:

HOMAN: Well, like I said, there was quite a few people comin’ in to CP [the “command post”] in order to get more information – ‘cuz we were trying to get ‘em out. A couple of trucks drove into the yard, and guys started jumping out, and I could see right away when they were getting out of the truck they were very agitated. We had one of the men run out toward our car. I was standing in front of one of our cars. John Bidler, the Connecticut [Oath Keepers] president, was standing over by the driver’s door. The gentleman came and he, uh, all of a sudden the gentleman started running toward me and hit me right in the chest with his forearm and, uh, put me down.

RHODES: That was Jack, that’s one of Jerry DeLamus’ guys from New Hampshire. That’s who did that. Dropped you in the dirt right?

HOMAN: He dropped me down and he immediately went to John Bidler and, uh, basically done the same. He just physically threw him to the ground.

We saw the same kind of macho radicalism during the April 12 confrontation with Bureau of Land Management and other law-enforcement officers – though it was somewhat obscured from public view.
A remarkable retrospective piece on the standoff from Las Vegas TV news station KLAS laid this reality bare. It revealed that the situation came within a hair’s breadth of becoming an all-out gun battle which the gathered “Patriots” defending Bundy seemed determined – indeed, outright eager – to have.

When Las Vegas police officers – several of them African-American – were called in to help bolster the outmanned local law enforcement ranks at the scene, those on the other side were anything but civilized:

8 News NOW

OFFICER TOM JENKINS: We were told, we’re going to go down there and we’re going to get between the BLM and the protesters. We were going, okay, we’ve been there before, but as we were driving up, it was like a movie set. It didn’t look real; people in the back of pickup trucks with rifles and shotguns. It was hard to grasp that at the beginning.

The report notes that the 30 or so Metro officers were placed between an estimated 400 militiamen bristling with weaponry and the fearful BLM workers whose job was gathering cattle. The crowd became nasty and began hurling taunts and insults of many stripes:

JENKINS: They had no respect for authority. Everything that you can think of to call a human being, animals, everything.

Jenkins said one of the protesters asked him if he was ready to die: “I don’t know his name. He was wearing a Pittsburgh Steelers jersey. I’ll never forget that,” he said.

Another KLAS report noted that some of the militiamen who pointed weapons at federal agents during the April 12 clash may find themselves in legal hot water now. Clark County Assistant Sheriff Joe Lombardo confirmed that officers gathered intelligence on the people who brandished guns at the scene, and said that people who aimed their guns at officers would be dealt with.

“Yes, there will be consequences, definitely. That is unacceptable behavior. If we let it go, it will continue into the future,” Lombardo said.

While KLAS reporters were gathering information for that story, however, their vehicles were vandalized by militiamen at the scene: “Pistol-packing militia men have blocked 8 News NOW’s access to public roads,” the story reported. “Some poured lighter fluid around our news vehicle while others got physical.”

Montana’s ‘Natural Man’ Defies Courts, Sets Up Another Rural ‘Patriot’ Showdown

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.] 


Ernie Wayne terTelgte likes to style himself as a Montana mountain man, dressing in buckskins, boots and tricornered hats and sometimes bearing an old muzzle-loading musket. He likes to elaborate upon his theories about so-called sovereign citizenship in a florid 18th-century style. But it isn’t a silly nostalgia act.

The Bozeman man has, in fact, been challenging Montana’s courts and legal system in the name of his extremist belief system all while adopting anachronistic clothing and calling himself the “Natural Man.”

Asked to explain why he was fishing without a license, terTeltge told a judge: “I was searching for something to put in my stomach as I am recognized to be allowed to do by universal law,” he said. “I am the living man and I have the right to forage for food when I am hungry.”

This all could be written off as the peculiar antics of another kook with convoluted legal ideas – something not unheard of in Montana – but for the fact that terTeltge has amassed supporters locally and regionally. His fight with the courts over what began as a simple fishing citation has become the latest cause célèbre among the far right in the Mountain West, including the region’s antigovernment “Patriots” and associated militias.

Some have gone so far as to begin organizing “citizen grand juries,” another tactic of the sovereign citizen movement, which purport to allow ordinary citizens to present cases to the local sheriff and sit in judgment of local government officials. Indeed, terTeltge himself has played a leading role in helping to organize these “juries” in the Bozeman area.

These activities have a long history in Montana, including the Montana Freemen of the 1990s, some of whom were from the Bozeman area and who practiced a similar kind of “sovereign citizenship” theory in promoting their illegal moneymaking schemes. Indeed, one of terTeltge’s cohorts in forming a “citizen grand jury”, a Bozeman man named Steve McNeil, was heavily involved with the Freemen and was arrested at one of their trials in Billings in 1996. Other extremists, such as neo-Nazi Karl Gharst, have used “citizen grand juries” to threaten the Montana Human Rights Network.

In recent years, these ideas have been spread widely in places such as Montana through the auspices of the Tea Party movement, in which old “Patriot” movement ideas have commingled freely with mainstream conservative politics, to the point that in many parts of the state Tea Party ideologues are nearly indistinguishable from the militiamen who got their start there in the 1990s.

Ernie terTeltge appears to have gotten his start that way. He first appeared on the region’s political scene in 2010, leading a contingent of Tea Party demonstrators as they protested efforts to pass health care reform outside the Gallatin County Courthouse. TerTeltge was wearing his trademark mountain man outfit.

Then, in August 2013, terTeltge was caught fishing without a license at the Three Forks Pond, a state-managed area, and refused to give the game warden his name. He was subsequently charged with resisting arrest.

TerTeltge began demonstrating in front of the courthouse in Three Forks in early November as his court proceedings began. A video shows him holding up a cardboard sign and explaining sovereign citizen ideology to passersby on the street.

Then, on Nov. 19, he made a court appearance on the resisting-arrest charge in Three Forks before City Judge Wanda Drusch. It did not go well. He yelled at the judge: “Do not tell me to shut up! I am the living, natural man, and my voice will be heard!”

He also pointed at the American flag in the corner and told the judge: “That is the Jolly Roger, that thing you call the American flag with the golf fringe around it is the Jolly Roger, and you are acting as one of its privateers!”

When Drusch got up to confer with law enforcement officers, terTeltge and his supporters peremptorily marched out of the courtroom, got in their vehicles and departed.

That tactic did not work for his next court appearance three days later, however. Once again, terTeltge tried to buffalo Judge Drusch with a flood of pseudo-legal language even as she warned him continuously that he would be found in contempt of court if he did not desist. Finally she ordered deputies to arrest him, and they did, handcuffing terTeltge as he protested: “I cannot give you recognition, I am constrained by the United States Constitution of 1789.”

Things got even stickier in January when he went before Justice of the Peace Rick West, who sent terTeltge back to jail, again for contempt, after he refused to remove his hat in the courtroom. This time, he had a larger crowd of supporters, but there were also over 30 law enforcement officers present to keep the peace. TerTeltge wound up spending 30 days in jail.

This incident threw local “Patriots” into a tizzy. One of terTeltge’s allies –William Wolf, a formerly homeless man who has been involved in efforts by Bozeman-area extremists to file for political office as Democrats – threatened to arrest Judge West as a “sovereign citizen,” setting local law enforcement even further on edge.

Then Wolf approached Gallatin County commissioners about forming a “citizens grand jury” to review claims of “human rights violations” in terTeltge’s case. The idea proved somewhat popular in Bozeman; one gathering attracted over 50 people to discuss forming what they saw as challenge to “corrupt government.”

At his most recent appearance in March, however, terTeltge was more contrite and cooperative. As a result, Judge West did not return him to jail, and he was freed until his trials begin. His fishing license trial is scheduled to begin next week.

“Patriot” movement leaders are watching the case closely. Chuck Baldwin, the former Constitution Party candidate now living in the Flathead Valley in hopes of creating a white homeland, recently returned from his visit to the Bundy Ranch standoff in Nevada and regaled an audience in Kalispell with tales of the militias’ exploits in Nevada. Then Baldwin urged his audience to pay similar attention to terTeltge’s case.

“I realize, we all recognize that everybody cannot up and leave and go a thousand miles away, depending on your schedule, your home responsibilities, et cetera. We understand that,” Baldwin said. “We still have to be watchful here in the state of Montana. We’ve got a situation in Bozeman, right here in our state, that we need to take care of, and we really need to rally around. You’ll be hearing more about that soon.”

All of this far-right activism concerns local government officials, who have become all too familiar with this brand of extremism in recent years in Montana. Jim Taylor, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana, noted that there’s nothing legal about these theories.

“You can’t just make up law. Law is what it is,” Taylor said. “You can’t just say, ‘And we’re going to have a grand jury on my block.’ It doesn’t work that way.”

Back at the Bundy Ranch, It’s Oath Keepers vs. Militiamen as Wild Rumors Fly

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

It was the imminent drone attack that finally did it.

Paranoid rumors are not only common at gatherings of antigovernment “Patriots,” they’re practically the entire raison d’etre for them. So when a wild and paranoid rumor began circulating – that Attorney General Eric Holder was preparing a drone strike on the armed militiamen who gathered at Cliven Bundy’s ranch in Nevada – it unleashed a rift within the camp, which is brimming with fear, rage, testosterone and firearms.

Vicious infighting among those remaining at the camp – estimated at less than a hundred – broke out a little more than two weeks after heavily armed militiamen forced federal agents to back down from a planned roundup of Bundy’s illegally grazing cattle from public lands. After vowing to stay on and protect Bundy – who then stumbled on the national stage with an outpouring of racist commentary – the remaining “Patriots,” who have been raising fear levels among local residents, have begun feuding. And it has been revealing.

Apparently, someone within one of the major factions at the camp, the Oath Keepers, relayed word of the imminent drone attack to his leaders. Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes responded by pulling his people out of what they called “the kill zone” (the area the supposed drone would be striking). When the other militiamen learned that the Oath Keepers had pulled out, they were outraged.

As you can see in the video above, the angry militiamen – led by a Montana “Patriot” named Ryan Payne, who has been acting as the spokesman for the militiamen at the ranch – held an impromptu gathering at the camp to discuss the situation. They openly talk about shooting Rhodes and other Oath Keepers leaders – because in their view, the Oath Keepers’ actions constituted “desertion” and “cowardice” – and describe how “the whole thing is falling apart over there.” At the end, they vote unanimously to oust the Oath Keepers, or at least its leadership, from the Bundy Ranch camp.

PAYNE: We are open to gentlemanly conversation. But this man and the people that obeyed that order have violated my personal creed. You don’t fucking walk in and say, ‘I’m sorry,’ and you’re back in, brother. You can walk in and say you’re sorry, and you’re lucky that you’re not getting shot in the back. Because that’s what happens to deserters on the battlefield.

For his part, Rhodes and his fellow Oath Keepers are keeping a stiff upper lip about the rejection. Rhodes himself has returned to his Montana home, reportedly for a family birthday, and his underlings say he plans to return. Oath Keepers organizer Elias Alias (aka Franklin Shook) described the incident on the group’s website as an effort “to sabotage the Bundy stand against the government,” and reported that other “Patriot” movement leaders, including militiaman Mike Vanderboegh and Sheriff Richard Mack, remain firmly within their camp.

Alias also tried to explain the incoming-drone rumor:

Yes, it is true: Oath Keepers received a bizarre bit of leaked info which could not be verified but which also could not be ignored. Our contact is connected with the Department of Defense – or ‘was’. The info we received stated that Eric Holder of the Department of Justice had okayed a drone strike on the Bundy ranch near Bunkerville, Nevada, within a 48 hour period over the weekend of April 26/27, 2014.

That, fortunately, turned out to be ‘dis-info’ – a false rumor. And though it came from a trusted source, Oath Keepers could neither prove nor disprove it.

In the ensuing panic at the camp, “Oath Keepers advised people there to consider evacuation,” Alias said. He referred to the angry reaction of the militiamen as “backwash”.

He also admitted that there was a great deal of contention about how $40,000 raised on behalf of the Bundy family through the Oath Keepers was handled, since the organization wound up only writing the family a check for $12,500.

Another YouTube video, which has since been removed, but transcripts of which were posted at DailyKos, revealed the depths of the militiamen’s animus towards Rhodes and his organization. One of them – the nominal “head of security” for the Bundy family, a man nicknamed “Booda Bear” – rants angrily:

My guys sleep in the dirt out here, we’re on shifts for 14 hours a day and trying to make sure that this family stays safe and secure … and just so everybody knows, as Booda, head of security for the Bundy Family I can swear on the white skin that covers my ass there will not be an Oath Keeper — there WILL NOT BE AN OATH KEEPER allowed to set foot on the internal ranch property.

Alias responded to these slurs by suggesting that “Booda” and pals were actually FBI plants:

Some of the purported “leaders” of the militia at the ranch are doing exactly what any agent provocateur would do after having infiltrated the militia and claimed a role in leadership. Did you notice the massive ego about who is going to command who? Did you notice the drama in the tendency to speak of Oath Keepers as if we were a militia, which we are not. These militia “leaders” would judge us by battlefield standards even though there has not been a “battlefield” since April 12, 2014? They would shoot us for desertion? Really? That is amazing, and is the kind of bumbling consciousness which a conditioned and programmed special warfare officer or a federal agent would offer if he had to think on his feet of a sudden.

“Patriots” often talk about fighting what they see as a second Civil War in America soon. But as the militiamen at the Bundy Ranch are demonstrating, the civil wars they end up fighting are usually within their own ranks.

Ongoing Militia Presence Raises Fears Among Locals Near Bundy Ranch

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

People in rural southeastern Nevada and the surrounding area are not accustomed to being the center of national media attention, as they have increasingly been since their neighbor, rancher Cliven Bundy, began his notorious standoff with federal authorities. But what bothers them now is the threatening presence of armed militiamen who have taken up semi-permanent residency at Bundy’s ranch.

Some local residents, in fact, are complaining that the militiamen are setting up armed checkpoints and detaining people as they travel to their homes, asking for proof that they live nearby before allowing them to proceed. However, the militiamen themselves deny this, and investigating news crews have not found any evidence of it.

What these locals can say with certainty, though, is that the circus surrounding the standoff and the militias’ refusal to leave is not only disrupting their normally quiet lives, it is costing them money.

Congressman Steve Horsford of Las Vegas has been outspoken in criticizing the militiamen, charging that local residents have been confronted by militiamen who have set up armed checkpoints and demanded that they prove they live in the area before being allowed to pass. Horsford also says the militias have created a “persistent presence” along federal highways and state and county roads.

Horsford has demanded that Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie crack down on the outsiders, saying they make local residents feel unsafe.

“I am greatly concerned about the safety and well-being of my constituents after meeting with local community members this past week. I urge Sheriff Gillespie to investigate these reports, as this sort of intimidation cannot be tolerated,” Horsford said.

“We must respect individual constitutional liberties, but residents of and visitors to Clark County should not be expected to live under the persistent watch of an armed militia,” Horsford wrote in a letter to Gillespie. “Residents have expressed their desire to see these groups leave their community. I urge you to investigate these reports and to work with local leaders to ensure that their concerns are addressed in a manner that allows the community [to] move forward without incident.”

They aren’t the only residents who feel threatened. According to a report from KLAS-TV in Las Vegas, the militiamen have also threatened people who live in the nearby town of Mesquite, and businesses there claim they have lost over $100,000 because of their presence.

The station reported that a local hotel was forced to evacuate all of its clients one evening following a bomb threat. The hotel also received at least nine threatening calls after it permitted Bureau of Land Management rangers to stay there. The callers demanded the BLM rangers be kicked out or the hotel “would not be standing in the morning.”

One hotel worker told the news crew he had been told by an anonymous militia member that he would be “dragged out in the parking lot and shot”.

News crews were unable to find any armed checkpoints when they went out searching for them. A militia group spokesman named Ryan Payne denied to KVVU-TV that they were conducting such checks.

“We are not to set up checkpoints, we are not to pull over civilians, without, you know, reasonable cause,” Payne said. Of course, militiamen have no legal right to pull anyone over – with or without reasonable cause.

But local residents remain far from assured. “We are not a playground for armed militias,” Horsford said. “This unfortunate incident and the outside groups that have come for their own agenda are putting a black eye on this community.”

Kyle Hunt’s Easter Egg Idea Hatches Hate Messages in Virginia Neighborhood

Even on his way out the door, would-have-been white-supremacist movement leader Kyle Hunt – progenitor of the nationwide “White Man’s March” last month that drew a trickle of participants and a flood of derision – managed to demonstrate the contagiously vile nature of his politics.

Only a couple of weeks before penning his recent letter of resignation, Hunt also published a post urging his remaining followers to try out some creative means of spreading their message – namely, “Diversity = White Genocide,” the slogan shown at all of the March’s events. Hunt’s favorite idea: Put “pro-white” messages in Easter eggs  and spread them around neighborhoods.

Sure enough – as WRIC-TV reports, someone took him up on the idea. Easter eggs with racist messages were planted around a suburban Virginia neighborhood this weekend. And sure enough, the messages were precisely those promoting the White Man’s March ideology.

Parents, unsurprisingly, were shocked and appalled:

“We don't want other kids around here who can read being like, 'Hey mommy what's the million man white march or what's the genocide1 project?' Most of us don't want to explain genocide to our 6-year-olds,” said Jackie.

"It's disturbing knowing my son is walking around the yard a lot and finding that. It’s something he may find and have questions about that not necessarily at his age –I want to explain to him. That there are people in this world who don't think everyone is equal,” said Brandon Smith.

They found several more in people's yards, leaving residents in disbelief.

"Everybody's shocked. We are genuinely floored. Why would somebody do this? Why here?"

Of course, Hunt had promoted his idea with a disingenuous caveat: “Since we are not targeting children, think of some ways to get these eggs into the hands of adults.” Obviously, that did not work out so well.

Planting Easter eggs with white=supremacist messages in them where children can find them is actually not a new tactic or idea, though Hunt seemed to think it was. Neo-Nazis in Pekin, Ill., used a similar tactic back in 2009, and members of the Aryan Nations in Auburn, Mich., did likewise in 2010. Indeed, the idea dates back at least as far as 2006 when neo-Nazis in Olympia, Wash., mixed their white-supremacy messages with pornography for the kids to find.

Interview: On 'Ring of Fire' with Mike Papantonio, Talking About Cliven Bundy

Last week, Mike Papantonio interviewed me to discuss my post about how the Cliven Bundy standoff has not only drawn the Patriots out of the woodwork so that we can now see them in all their glory, but actually has emboldened them and empowered them by giving them -- at least in their own minds -- evidence of the rightness of their Bizarro Planet beliefs.

Notably, this interview took place before Bundy's ruminations about "the Negro" made the rounds -- but everything I said fit perfectly well into that context.

And I have some thoughts about the underlying motivations for the rush of the mainstream right to come to Bundy's defense. Yes, the Koch Brothers have a role there ...

Here's the entire episode. Thanks to Mike and his producer, Farron Cousins, for having me on.

Bundy Doubles Down on ‘Negro’ Talk, and Supporters Flee in Droves

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

Cliven Bundy keeps doubling down on his observations about African Americans, and many of his erstwhile supports can’t run away quickly enough.

On Thursday, the New York Times published racially incendiary remarks by Bundy, who mused about the status of black people – “Are they better off as slaves?” he asked. Bundy’s support from mainstream conservatives and prominent Republicans essentially vanished. So he began making the media rounds again, trying to explain himself.

But Bundy didn’t apologize or back away from his remarks. Rather, he doubled down, emphasizing at a press conference that he thought he was right to ask such questions:

I've been wondering – Cliven Bundys are wondering about these people – now I’m talking about the black community. I’ve been wondering – are they better off with their young women aborting their children? Are they better off with their young men in prison? And are they better off with the older people on the sidewalks in front of their government-issued homes with a few children on them – are they better off, are they happier than they was when they was in the South, in front of their homes with their chickens and their gardens and their children around them, and their men having something to do?

He also went on CNN’s “New Day” program this morning and again doubled down, this time saying Martin Luther King hadn’t finished his job if black people were going to be offended by the things he said:

Maybe I sinned, maybe I need to ask forgiveness, and maybe I don’t know what I actually said. But when you talk about prejudice, we’re talking about not being able to exercise what we think and our feelings —  we don’t have freedom to say what we want. If I say ‘Negro’ or ‘black boy’ or ‘slave’ — I’m not — if those people cannot take those kinda words and not be offensive, then Martin Luther King hasn’t got his job done yet.

The flight from support for Bundy continued apace, with Republican politicians and party officials continuing to assert that they have nothing to do with the Nevada rancher – who has been in a standoff with the Bureau of Land Management over his illegally grazing cattle.

However, the militiamen who showed up with weapons at Bundy’s ranch in Nevada say they continue to support him; indeed, they see the news stories as just another conspiracy. “It’s part of misinformation to maintain the divide,” one militiaman told the Las Vegas Sun. “Things like this will be put out there to discredit Bundy.”

Controversial black conservative Alan Keyes defended the remarks, saying they weren’t racist: “He wasn’t talking so much about black folks, but about the harm and damage that the leftist socialism has done to blacks.”

But the majority of Bundy’s mainstream backers have made clear that they want to talk about other cases of “government abuse” now, instead of Bundy’s. At Fox News, Bundy’s biggest on-air champion, Sean Hannity, also denounced Bundy, but seemed to blame it all on the “liberal media” as well.

Hannity devoted much of his show Thursday to simultaneously denouncing Bundy and the New York Times, as well as his critics:

HANNITY: All right, allow me to make myself abundantly clear. I believe those comments are downright racist. They are repugnant. They are bigoted. And it’s beyond disturbing. I find those comments to be deplorable, and I think it’s extremely unfortunate that Cliven Bundy holds those views.

Now, while I supported the Bundy ranch as they took a stand against the Bureau of Land Management, I was absolutely dismayed and frankly disappointed after reading the article and then hearing the commentary. However, I also want to say this. The ranch standoff that took place out in Nevada was not about a man named Cliven Bundy. At the heart of this issue was my belief that our government is simply out of control. Now, to me, this was about a federal agency’s dangerous response to a situation that could have resulted in a catastrophe, and that means people dying and people being shot, kind of comparable to what we saw in Waco, Texas.

Hannity then rambled through a number of other supposed examples of out-of-control government, including cases of veterans being given bad medical care and federal water-rights disputes in California, and then concluded by throwing Benghazi and Obamacare into the mix. According to Hannity, if anyone was to blame, it was more likely the New York Times (for their Benghazi coverage) and Jon Stewart (who has been mercilessly pillorying Hannity for his coverage of the Bundy standoff).

The New Yorker’s Andy Borowitz satirically devised a statement by Fox News to deal with the controversy: “Cliven Bundy’s outrageous racist remarks undermine decades of progress in our effort to come up with cleverer ways of saying the same thing.”

Mainstream Supporters Scatter after Cliven Bundy Muses on ‘the Negro’ in the New York Times

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, whose showdown with federal authorities over cattle grazing rights has attracted a large contingent of antigovernment “Patriot” movement supporters – as well as fawning coverage from Fox News, and the open support of various mainstream conservative politicians – has discovered that openly spouting bigotry is a good way to lose your backers.

Bundy was quoted in a Wednesday New York Times piece spouting off at length about race relations, and it was not pretty:

I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do.

And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.

Now Media Matters has posted footage of his remarks:





Immediately, one of Bundy’s more prominent political supporters – Republican Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada – distanced himself from the rancher, telling the Times reporter that he “completely disagrees with Mr. Bundy’s appalling and racist statements, and condemns them in the most strenuous way.”

Spokesmen at the offices of Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, another prominent Bundy backer, did not offer the Times an immediate response. But today Paul denounced Bundy’s rant, saying: “His remarks on race are offensive and I wholeheartedly disagree with him.”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who also has openly supported Bundy’s campaign, demurred when asked about the remarks, saying he hadn’t read them, and told “CBS This Morning” that the Bundy matter was only “a side story” in the larger picture regarding federal land use issues.

At Fox News, where the Bundy Ranch story has filled hours of airtime over the past two weeks and its hosts – particularly Sean Hannity and Greta Van Susteren – have openly championed Bundy’s cause, there was mostly silence. The network’s coverage of the scene at the ranch suddenly disappeared: Media Matters reports that “Fox had mentioned the rancher only twice, and never covered his racist comments.”

Occasional host and frequent guest Andrew Napolitano told viewers to “forget the battle in Nevada” and focus on events in Texas instead.

Van Susteren did speak out on her blog: “Let me make this plain: I condemn what Cliven Bundy said about African Americans.” Hannity so far has made no comment.

Some of Bundy’s media supporters, however, were content to make excuses for him. CNN’s Dana Loesch, a conservative pundit who has been among Bundy’s more avid supporters, commented:

I hope no one is surprised that an old man rancher isn’t media trained to express himself perfectly. He seems to be decrying what big government has done to the black family — which big government has negatively affected not just the black family, but all families regardless of ethnicity — so perhaps he included that in his remarks against big government?

Back at the Bundy Ranch: More Militiamen Gather, Things Get Crazier

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]
 
Armed militiamen are continuing to arrive in southeastern Nevada from around the nation with the aim of preventing the federal government from rounding up rancher Cliven Bundy’s illegally grazing cattle – and they don’t appear to be going away any time soon.

The Nevada standoff has emerged as the most significant gathering of antigovernment extremists since 1996, when supporters gathered briefly en masse outside the Montana ranch where a group of self-described “Freemen” engaged in an 81-day standoff with FBI agents who sought to arrest key members of their group.

The militiamen at the Bundy Ranch are from all over the United States. Only a few, however, are from militia groups large enough to be known quantities.

A Las Vegas Review-Journal report noted that one man from Philipsburg, Mont., claimed to represent the “West Mountain Rangers,” a group that has not popped up on anyone’s radar previously. A Utah man said he was from the People’s United Mobile Armed Services, whose Facebook page says that they are a “Revolutionary Movement for the Second American Revolution” but are otherwise almost completely unknown.

Indeed, most of the militias in attendance appear to have very small memberships, such as the Oklahoma militiamen who showed up hankering for a fight: “It’s up to the feds. The ball’s in their court! You can do this legally or if you want to try to do a land grab violently, you can do that. We’re going to resist you!” They make the dubious claim in their video that they are 50,000 strong.

These militiamen believe Oklahoma could be next for federal “tyranny”: “Just look around the country. They’re doing it everywhere. If they can do it in Nevada, they can do it in Colorado, they can do it in Texas. I mean, what’s to stop them from coming to Oklahoma? The only thing to stop them is We the People.”

Members of an outfit from the Idaho Panhandle turned up in Nevada, the Idaho Lightfoot Militia. They have been organizing for over five years now and are a known quantity back home. Their level of participation in Nevada is unclear, and their leader, Jeff Stankiewicz, was quoted saying he discouraged people from going.
Ed Komenda, a reporter for the Las Vegas Sun, spent some up-close time with militiamen at the scene in Bunkerville, and what he found was especially eye-opening. His piece for the Sun revealed a high level of anger and testosterone, whipped up by conspiracist paranoia, that seems unlikely to level out any time soon.

One militiaman in particular, who was fond of dropping the F-bomb, rode with Komenda and other militiamen to a protest with an assault rifle and plenty of other weaponry, including a .338 Magnum rifle and a Marine-issue 7-inch knife:

Rapolla is prepared for a war with his government. His guns, he says, aren’t just a show of force. Not knowing what to expect when he rolled into town, he says he was ready to die — and, if he must, shoot a federal agent.

“Our pistols are shooting through my f****** window if there’s a roadblock, then we’re f****** getting out,” he said. “We’re gonna go to wherever the guns are blazing. We’re not gonna walk to a f****** bloody (battlefield).”

Komenda found that, to a man, these people were more focused on having an armed conflict with federal agents than on rescuing a cattle rancher from supposed tyranny:

In their view, the government’s goal was to exterminate the Bundys. As several militia members put it, they came to the Bundy ranch to prevent another Waco — the 1993 standoff between federal agents and David Koresh that left 76 men, women and children dead. That incident helped spawn the modern militia, which is not an official force but a collection of armed citizens who believe the government is out to destroy the nation and enslave the American people.

“You feel an obligation as an American,” DeLemus said, standing near his tent, wearing a water-filled hydration pack, full Army fatigues and loaded sidearm. “You’ve got an American family who is rightfully on property their family paid the grazing rights on over a hundred and some odd years ago and our government comes in and decides they want to change the rules on that, break the law, really, by changing those rules after a contract’s been signed with their great-great-grandfather — I believe it was — and then run them out? And then use force on their family? And then put the full weight of the American government on them? Shame on them.”

Potok on MSNBC: ‘Patriots’ at Bundy Standoff Not Quite ‘Domestic Terrorists’

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]


Last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada decried the antigovernment “Patriot” activists who rushed to southeastern Nevada to mount an armed defense of Cliven Bundy’s illegally grazing cattle as “nothing more than domestic terrorists.”

On the Friday edition of “All In” on MSNBC, host Chris Hayes asked the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Mark Potok if that was the right term to use. He explained that Reid was not far off:

POTOK: Well, they’re not quite domestic terrorists, not yet. But you know, I’ve seen the pictures, they weren’t merely sitting up overlooking law enforcement officers with their sniper rifles, they had them trained – scoped rifles trained on the heads of law enforcement officials. I mean, you know, they were a split second away from real bloodshed, and bloodshed that was entirely provoked by the Bundys and the Bundys’ supporters.

Earlier in the segment, Hayes hosted Nevada Republican Assemblywoman Michelle Fiore, a Bundy ally and one of the mainstream political figures who has been on the scene in Nevada, supporting the “Patriots” in defiance of federal authorities. Hayes tried to pin Fiore down on whether she believed federal authorities had the right to confiscate Bundy’s cattle, considering they had a court order in hand – Bundy has been adamant that he does not recognize the federal government as a legitimate entity – but Fiore was evasive on the point, claiming instead that the feds had mishandled the situation by coming in with guns after Bundy threatened a “range war.”

HAYES: Do you agree with that stance? Do you recognize the authority of the federal government?

FIORE: I recognize our federal government overstepped and overreached in our state of Nevada. That’s what I recognize. I recognize we have a lot of issues to conclude. We also have the spotlight on Nevada right now, looking at the way BLM had zero stewardship in herding cattle, slaughtering cattle. That’s what I’m recognizing.

I’m recognizing what I’ve seen. This is my sixth day on the ground here in Bunkerville, and I’m recognizing that this was handled totally incompetent, I’m questioning the BLM and I’m also going to request either a resignation or termination of the person that had ordered this to be done.

HAYES: But that’s a distinct question. I mean, I understand your point. You think that the way that the law has been enforced the BLM has been heavy handed. That`s a distinct question from lines of legal authority. I’m just asking you a simple yes or no question — do you recognize the authority of the federal government?

FIORE: Oh, I recognize the authority that they’ve — they believe that they have. I just question it.

HAYES: So you do not — you agree with Cliven Bundy the federal government does not have authority over the land and over the taxpayers of Nevada.

FIORE: No. Chris, don`t put words in my mouth. I’m not saying I agree with Cliven Bundy. What I’m saying is the way this was handled is really suspicious. When in the heck do we send our federal government with arms to collect a bill? When do we do that?

Fiore told Hayes that the message Bundy’s supporters sent to the government was: “Don’t come here with guns and expect the American people not to fire back.”
Hayes asked Potok about Fiore’s perspective.

HAYES: What do you say to the argument that the BLM basically provoked this entire thing?

POTOK: Well, I don`t think it’s true. I think we`re talking about a man who is a thief, a man who has
stolen a million dollars or whatever the precise amount might be from the American people, from his fellow ranchers, all the ranchers all over this country who actually do pay their fees.

You know, something else to respond to something the assemblywoman said, you know, in fact the jails, the prisons are full of people who have refused to pay their taxes for one reason or another.

So, you know, yes, I think the optics were bad. I think coming in there with helicopters and police dogs was almost guaranteed to provoke this kind of reaction, especially because the whole operation was dragging on day after day after day.

But, you know, at the end of the day, what these people are proposing is that we are not a nation of laws, that stealing money from other Americans is somehow a defense of the Constitution and liberty. You know, this whole idea of county supremacy truth be told is directly descended from groups like Posse Comitatus, you know, racist, anti-Semitic violent groups. That’s where this whole ideology is coming from.

In the meantime, Sen. Reid continues to stand behind his remarks: “These people think they’re patriots, they’re not,” he said on CNN. “If they’re patriots, we’re in very big trouble.”

Originator of ‘White Man’s March’ Hangs It Up, Saying Idea Will Live On

It wasn’t the flood of scorn and derision, which Kyle Hunt says he fully expected last month when he announced his nationwide “White Man’s March” – in which small clusters of white supremacists popped up in various locales bearing banners with the slogan “Diversity = White Genocide” – that most discouraged him. No, it was the astonishingly vicious reaction by his would-be allies within the white power movement that really rocked his world.

Either way, Hunt announced this weekend at the White Man’s March blog that he was handing off the reins of the “White Man’s March” to…no one in particular. He’s just resigning:

Of course animosity was to be expected from the anti-White media, but sadly many alleged pro-Whites have been launching vicious assaults upon me, trying to discredit the message and methodology of the White Man March by attacking my character and reputation. Sure, the aspersions are being cast by cowards and incompetents, but such tactics still help to discourage others from joining the cause. At this point, I consider having myself as a “leader” to be more of a hindrance to our cause than a help. I do not want to be a liability. I previously wrote that this is not an organization and there is no leader and now I am just making it official.

It’s not clear how, but Hunt apparently believes the concept will now continue anyway:

Now that the White Man March has taken off, you really do not need me anymore. You are your own leader. I look forward to seeing all of the things that you will accomplish.

Hunt is right about one thing: His ex-Google-guy-with-a-ponytail schtick went over like Malcolm X at a cross burning among the longtime white supremacist factions to whom he was a complete newcomer and stranger. One leading white power activist, who himself claims credit for the “Diversity” banner, called Hunt’s campaign “a hijack,” and numerous white nationalists denounced his efforts as a sideshow.

Kyle Hunt’s illustration for spreading his ideas in Easter eggs

None of that seemed to have bothered Hunt until very recently, as far as we can tell. Earlier this month he published a long, cheery post titled “Game Planning for Future Marches” that included, among other bright ideas, invading children’s Easter celebrations by planting white supremacist messages in their plastic eggs: “You could buy some of those really cheap plastic Easter eggs, maybe put in something for a little bit of weight, and include a small strip of paper in there with some of our material printed on one side, with your favorite websites printed on the back.”

Hunt does make a disclaimer of sorts – “Since we are not targeting children, think of some ways to get these eggs into the hands of adults” – that overlooks the fact that Easter eggs are in fact targeted to children.

Retirement was probably a good idea for Kyle Hunt.

Limbaugh, Right-Wing Pundits Try to Blame Max Blumenthal for Kansas Rampage

White supremacists began pointing fingers almost immediately after the lethal rampage at two Jewish community centers in Kansas by longtime white supremacist Frazier Glenn Miller (aka Frazier Glenn Cross). Some supported Miller or blamed Jews for the attack, while others disavowed him.

Meanwhile on the mainstream right, several leading conservatives attempted to blame liberals for the massacre. Specifically, they pinned the blame on a single liberal journalist, Max Blumenthal, because Miller on a handful of occasions praised Blumenthal’s against-the-grain reporting on the right wing in Israel. From there, they blamed liberal organizations more broadly for the incident, including one for whom Blumenthal has not worked for since 2009.

Leading the charge was Rush Limbaugh, who on his widely syndicated radio show Monday cited a column by Ron Radosh at PJ Media – headlined: “Who Inspired the Nazi Klan Leader’s Actions in Kansas? The Answer Here” – that detailed a handful of Miller’s characteristcally expletive and hate-filled rants that approvingly cited Blumenthal’s criticism of Israeli policies.

Working off Radosh’s piece, Limbaugh attacked not just Blumenthal and his well-known father (Clinton confidante Sidney Blumenthal) but also Media Matters, the liberal organization that monitors right-wing media:

LIMBAUGH: Max Blumenthal is the son of Sidney Blumenthal, who is, of course, Hillary Clinton’s confidant.  But Max Blumenthal, if I’m not mistaken, works at Media Matters for America.  And Max Blumenthal is one of a cabal of left-wing journalists that despise Israel, and this guy found his way to things that these people had written, and he was inspired. He admits he was inspired by all this, and that’s why he took action against the three Jewish people in Kansas City.

This is preposterous and blatantly false. Where to begin?

Blumenthal, who is of Jewish descent and has spent years off and on in Israel, does not “despise” Israel. Blumenthal has written a number of articles that criticize Israeli policies, just as Rush Limbaugh regularly criticizes the policies of the United States. Does that mean Limbaugh “despises” America? Of course not.
What’s more, there is no indication whatsoever that anything Blumenthal wrote “inspired” Miller.

As Limbaugh’s rant progressed, the distortion deepened:

At any rate, this guy, Glenn Miller, is a former KKK member.  He once ran for office as a Democrat. All the KKK are Democrats.  They always have been.  He’s an anti-Semite, obviously, and he did shout “Heil Hitler” when he was arrested, and this is what has been posted by him. These are apparently some really wacko extremist, pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic websites, and this guy’s posted plenty there where he identifies the people who inspire him.  He mentioned the name Max Blumenthal.

Limbaugh wrapped up the episode with this: “You got a former KKK member, literally insane, run for office as a Democrat, inspired by some people at Media Matters.”

Limbaugh, speaking on Monday, was wrong at just about every turn. He said that Miller stabbed three people, but everyone knew by Sunday night that three people had been shot to death. He claimed that Miller was a “huge Democrat” – in reality, he ran for office as a Democrat and a Republican and had no connections or success in either party. And Blumenthal does not work for Media Matters – he was a staff writer there from 2008-9.

Notwithstanding Radosh and Limbaugh’s lies and distortions, their attacks on Blumenthal spread quickly throughout the right-wing echo chamber, especially at neoconservative websites where Blumenthal is the subject of frequent attacks for his criticism of Israel (particularly his book-length expose of the Israeli right, Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel). At the the Washington Free Beacon, an unbylined story headlined “Kansas KKK Shooter Cited Max Blumenthal” claimed that it found “over 300” references to Blumenthal at VNN.

Max Blumenthal

Even liberal, pro-Israeli publications such as Haaretz ran with the smear. That paper published an article headlined “Kansas Murderer Admires Prominent Israeli Critic” and citied the Free Beacon piece, though it was eventually taken down by the editors of the paper due to its dubious claims.
In reality, as we have detailed at Hatewatch extensively, Miller was inspired by the far-right, white supremacist ideology he adopted in the 1970s, which included racial and ethnic hatred, homophobia and a emphasis on violence (as he explained last fall to the Southern Poverty Law Center). Miller was willing to appropriate any piece of information from any source that might help prove a point he wanted to make, and that included various “liberal media” and “Jew reporters,” as he typically referred to Blumenthal.

Miller had a history of violence and was ginned up by the ceaseless drumbeat of racial hatred that he bathed in daily at the Vanguard News Network. Any attempt to characterize his motives as deriving from “liberal” sources is an attempt to turn public understanding of the wellsprings of this kind of violence on its head.

Blumenthal is anything but a revered or celebrated figure on the far right, considering he spent many years writing exposes of far-right American extremists before turning his attention to their counterparts in Israel. In fact, he is widely reviled by users of VNN and related hate sites.

Alex Kane and Phan Nguyen at Mondoweiss performed a search of the various references to Blumenthal at these sites and found that the following descriptions were far more typical:

    “Jew Max Blumenthal”

    “Kike Max Blumenthal”

    “Jewish propagandists including … Max Blumenthal”

    “an avowed queer like Max Blumenthal”

    “Max Blumenthal … a flamboyant, exhibitionistic anti-racist”

    “that douche bag sodomite Max Blumenthal”

Kane and Nguyen also examined the Free Beacon claim that VNN referenced Blumenthal over 300 times and quickly ascertained that the references actually numbered closer to 40. And the vast majority of these, in fact, were viciously disparaging references such as those above.

Moreover, picking Blumenthal out of the literally thousands of various people and organizations who Miller cited over the course of his many years of hatemongering is mostly an exercise in selective blame-laying, considering that Miller was far more likely to approvingly cite the works of ostensibly mainstream conservatives. These include such neoconservatives as FrontPage.com editor David Horowitz, a close associate of Ron Radosh’s. In one post, Miller describes Horowitz as ”one of those jewish (sic) neocon ‘new friends’ of the White man who actually throws Whitey journalistic bones from time to time, such as his book ‘Hatin Whitey.’”

Perhaps Radosh should denounce Horowitz for inspiring Miller’s murderous rampage?

Indeed, Horowitz’s publication has apparently condoned Miller’s behavior in the past – notably, his role in the 1979 Greensboro Massacre, in which Klan members shot and killed five protest marchers. Miller was a leader of that massacre and did no prison time. A 2004 FrontPage review of a book about the incident blamed the victims for the massacre because they were Communists, and ultimately praised the KKK and neo-Nazi perpetrators: “In this war they were the patriots fighting an anti-American threat that was global in scope.”

Ironically, a recent FrontPage article not only blames Blumenthal for the Kansas shootings – once, again, because Miller had cited him – but concludes that his greatest dream was realized by the killing of Jews (though in fact no Jews were killed in the incident). It does not mention that David Horowitz was cited and praised even more fulsomely by Miller. And Haaretz, as Kane and Nguyen note, was cited 11,500 times at VNN.