Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL.

He really is that stupid.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Let there be snark.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

People are weird.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Every day Vance writes another chapter in the book called “Worst VP Pick Ever”.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

You are here: Home / Politics / America / Today’s Berkeley Beat Down: Planned Action by the Alt-Right

Today’s Berkeley Beat Down: Planned Action by the Alt-Right

by | 161 Comments

This post is in: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Earlier today in Berkeley things got violent. A dedicated group of folks on social media, with a significant amount being done by Caroline O.,  have been doing yeoman’s and yeowoman’s work to pull all the social media evidence together indicating who was really responsible: the alt-right. The violence was planned, orchestrated, and telegraphed on social media by a dedicated group of alt-righters. And it was done in such as way as to make it look like black bloc or antifa demonstrators, who are often associated with the extreme left even if they have nothing to really do with left of center politics in reality, were responsible. This allows the alt-right to have its cake (beat the daylights out of people it disagrees with) and eat it too (have it blamed on these same people).

Here’s some video of what went down:

Here’s just a smattering of the evidence that has been accumulated to demonstrate that the folks dressed all in black were alt-righters and were looking to instigate violence:

Based Stickman, real name Kyle Chapman, is this lovely fellow:

Historian Rick Perlstein wrote a bit about Chapman yesterday:

Behold Stick Man

I’ve seen the Berkeley footage Morgoth is referring to. That’s how I made the acquaintance of Stick Man.

Berkeley’s March 4 Trump was organized by a man named Richard Black, who announced that members of the alt-right, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists were banned. Among those who did not get the memo were Moshe Daniel, who goes by the nickname “Kilt Man.” Daniel depicts himself on Facebook with a giant serrated knife and a T-shirt featuring the face of the late Chilean fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet, the legend “PHYSICAL REMOVAL,” and another of those silhouettes of people being dropped from helicopters—a Pinochet-favored method for dealing with dissenters.

The march turned into a “small riot,” as gun-rights blogger Bob Owens, one of the most widely read on the web, and a cool and clear-thinking moderate, described it after reviewing the available documentation. “Both sides came to this incident prepared for a fight,” he wrote, concluding it was impossible to see “who threw the first punch.” In my mind, however, there were at least two moments where the person who threw the first punch was starkly evident. In both cases it was an individual who wore all black, from boots to baseball cap, and carried a distinctive black shield emblazoned with a “V” for victory, and an American flag. The man in black also wore a gas mask, surely in response to a widely disseminated urban legend that antifas are routinely attacking protesters with pepper spray. In one video he whacks a downed anti-Trump protester with the long wooden stick he carries (with two tiny American flags attached, thus he can call it a flagpole). In another, he can be seen smashing his stick down so hard on an unarmed protester’s head that the stick breaks in half.

He’s since become a right-wing folk hero, and, after Berkeley police arrested him on several felony charges, naturally, a right-wing martyr.

(much more at the link)

This is a serious problem. Dedicated, hard core alt-righters who push both Russian derived propaganda and are organizing themselves to conduct violence in a way as to lay the blame on left of center Americans who look to peacefully protest.

 

Reader Interactions

161Comments

  4. 4.

    Adam L Silverman

    @James E Powell: So this Chapman guy, and his buddies, have this whacky theory that if they base their flags on a stick (Based Stick) and they then beat someone with it, it is protected speech related activity under the 1st Amendment because what is on the flags is protected speech. If they just brought a traditional flag on a flag pole, then they think they’d be in trouble.

    It doesn’t make any sense to me, but I’m sure if you’re part of the group it has an internal logic that the rest of us are missing.

  5. 5.

    Extreme petting

    Oh well, hey maybe both extremist sides are to blame here. The Good Center people were, thank goodness, holding a fucking pointless, John Stewart feel-good jack-off fest to protest the fascists in power.

  12. 12.

    TenguPhule

    Let’s see how the Comey FBI reacts to this.

    If nothing happens, that means the fix is in.

  16. 16.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Origuy: Who knows. I’m not sure if the alt-right guys are into all the same stuff as the militia and sovereign citizen knuckleheads.

  17. 17.

    jl

    Thanks for putting this up, Adam. Important to get the word out about the true situation in East Bay.
    I listened to the MSNBC clip and it was irritating.
    The local news outfits could have helped them out. Anyone see any national coverage where they bothered to talk with local news reporters? Who was calling the play-by-play? Anyone know?

    Infuriating how lazy and ignorant the national news outlets are in reporting local and regional news.
    I suppose BJers from other regions around the country have the same reaction to national stories on stuff happening where they live.

    I hope no one was badly hurt. And maybe some cop nabbed Backed Stick Alaska or whoever he is.

  20. 20.

    Adam L Silverman

    @jl: I’ve been watching ice hockey, so I have no idea how it has been covered on cable news, if at all.

    I think most of the credit goes to Carolin O./RVAWonk who did the bulk of the social media sleuthing. I just decided to move it from social media to a blog. If you tweet, feel free to tweet the link at her.

    And there’s two different people: Baked Alaska, who was tight with Cernovich until they got into a fight over the Deplora Ball (had something to do with Milo I think) for the inauguration and Based Stick Man, who is a convicted felon named Kyle Chapman.

  25. 25.

    opiejeanne

    @Mike J: It’s certainly Night of the Lepus over on the East Side. We are witnessing the March Hare syndrome in full swing, even though it’s April and these are rabbits and not hares. They chase each other across streets, run around in wide circles like their navigation system is broken, and then stare defiantly at us and the cat, watching us from the lawn.
    Not sure why the males are going nuts because the females already have a nest of bunnies they’re tending. I think this is too early even for rabbits.

  29. 29.

    'As You Know' Bob

    …so… we’re not even at the symbolic “100 Days” mark — we’re still in the new administration’s “honeymoon period”…
    and we already have nazi street fighters?

    Ya know… this is not normal.

  30. 30.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I can’t think of a name that sounds more like a white sociopath than “Kyle Chapman.” It’s perfect. Especially if his middle name turns out to be “Wayne.”

  35. 35.

    Adam L Silverman

    @opiejeanne: Pretty much. I’m sure they didn’t just figure it out over the past month. It’s too late for me to go looking for them online, but I’m sure this is in one of the various handbooks these folks post online explaining how to take action. Of course they often use coded terminology (see the Army of God manual for great examples), so I might not recognize what they’re talking about.

  37. 37.

    Wag

    @Mike J:

    My uncle (4 years older then me) was a teenager in Sonoita AZ, where the movie was filmed. He got a job helping to take care of the rabbits, and helped drive them through a miniature model of the town. Good times!

  38. 38.

    jl

    @Adam L Silverman: They seem like amateurs. If they mess up, seems like they are leaving a nice trail for for prosecutions. They are acting like they are touring fans following a cult rock-n-roll act.

    The local anarchists who say even admitting to being allied with the Black Bloc is a betrayal to their cause are smarter about it, though I hope they get caught too, but it will be harder.

  42. 42.

    Another Scott

    @Adam L Silverman: What’s with the “Jesus Will Judge You” guy?

    There seems to be an awful lot of 1984 – “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought” – going on these days.

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  44. 44.

    Adam L Silverman

    @jl: I think they’re just oblivious to how overt they’re actually being. That what they’re doing is leaving a trail on social media that can be tracked by those willing to put the time.

  47. 47.

    Adam L Silverman

    @‘As You Know’ Bob: The good news is that almost everyone has a video recorder and camera on their phones. Makes it easy to identify and track these knuckleheads, especially when they leave tracks throughout social media.

  50. 50.

    jl

    @Ksmiami: I wasn’t going to bring this up for fear of seeming to make light of the situation, but when I was caught on the USC campus during the Rodney King riots, I think I saw what that looked like. The LAPD comnpletly disappeared and the campus cops were all on campus.

    Whenever some people who swaggered around like the anarchists or the alt-righters showed up to burn down the ‘wrong’ (aka locally owned) business, or try to pick some fights for whatever reason, try to provoke the campus cops (who looked terrified) , I’d see a pickup truck of neighborhood locals with half a dozen or so in the back with shot guns pull up from around some corner. A few shots into the air. And one of them would yell something like: Get the FUCK outta here or we ain’t pointing up next time. So,… that was interesting. After the first day, these types of people were more or less on regular patrol. You’d see the pickups drive around checking on stuff.

    So, I realize this stuff is very serious,. But I also worry that it could get much worse. I hope it does not. It probably won’t end up the way the Black Bloc and the alt-rightists think if the police are not there and they make certain locals angry enough. Especially in places like Oakland.

  51. 51.

    Mike J

    Andy Richter‏ Verified account @AndyRichter 3 hours ago
    I bet if Berkeley police started showing Fate of the Furious on a wall all those fuckers would cut those shenanigans out

  55. 55.

    Amaranthine RBG

    I was in Berkeley today over at the Freight.

    Didn’t know a thing about this happening until I saw this post.

    Strange

  56. 56.

    Gravenstone

    Always appreciate when the NWS puts out a severe thunderstorm warning 30 seconds AFTER the monster cell has rolled through.

  58. 58.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Major Major Major Major: Pretty much. That’s the real problem they have. No one is trying to control what they believe or think, what we do care about is that you simply be civil and polite to other people when out and about. They’ve decided this is PC tyranny and the most terrible of oppression that keeps them from speaking their minds and acting on their beliefs in public. Of course when those who disagree with them who tell them what they really think of their beliefs and actions they get all upset because everyone is being mean to them. Consistency, small minds, hobgoblins.

  68. 68.

    moops

    Walked through the events today. I live 2 blocks from city hall. I’m glad there was no shooting. The gun-rights crowd has been amping up lately for a chance to murder left-wingers in public.

    By Berkeley standards this didn’t crack my top ten. But I AM completely SICK of the helicopters. I don’t know who you are, but sell that $300K chopper and get a couple of drones, you idiots. The helicopter is always the catalyst for people freaking out. A half hour of that chopper noise and it hanging overhead and the less mentally stable protestors get aggressive.

    Have a good Easter everyone.

  69. 69.

    Chris T.

    Wouldn’t it be funny if the neonazis went in one side and the neonazis-dressed-as-black-bloc went in the other and beat the crap out of each other and there was no one else involved at all?

  70. 70.

    jl

    @Adam L Silverman: I was on the USC campus during the King riots with two gad students who were Ghanaian army vets. They got bored and decided to do a walking tour of the riot, since the real action started several blocks south of USC. I stayed and cowered on the campus, of course.

    Maybe they are available.

  73. 73.

    efgoldman

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Same idiot as in comment 27:

    Someone in California: Is getting convicted for a second felony still a required minimum sentence in California, or is only three-time losers? And are those laws still on the books since Democrats took over?

  76. 76.

    Adam L Silverman

    @efgoldman: The more devout the darker the chocolate/higher the cocoa content. So you’ll be wanting something from the Haredim line.

    https://img.papyrusonline.com/media/catalog/product/LCI/Nz/Qy/MjkwZTkwOWM3Nzk5ZWVhMzkxODIwY2RhMzJjMWM1YWI3YzNkODZkYzM2YzRjMzQyNTQyOGE4MGI3NGM1OTp7ImRzIjoiaW1hZ2UiLCJmIjoiXC80XC80XC80NDY4X2RlZmF1bHQuanBnIiwiZmEiOnRydWUsImZmIjp0cnVlLCJmcSI6OTAsImZ0Ijp0cnVlfQ~~.jpg

    https://s3.amazonaws.com/assets.forward.com/images/cropped/screen-shot-2015-11-12-at-112530-am-1447345823.png

  77. 77.

    Mnemosyne

    @jl:

    Did they make you go to the field house? I bugged out to Culver City, and G (who I didn’t know yet) drove up to Thousand Oaks with a roommate. My two roommates at the time were from South Central, so they went home to help guard their homes.

    Everyone I knew who tried to stay on campus got evacuated to the field house.

  81. 81.

    Suzanne

    @Mnemosyne: My grandfather’s euphemism of choice for Italians was “people whose last names end with a vowel”. That didn’t apply to any of the Nyuricans or Poles or Mexicans. Just Italians. Contrast that with my father, who, upon hearing that I was going to be married and he learned Mr. Suzanne’s surname, said, “Oh, she’s marrying a wop!”

  82. 82.

    moops

    Kyle Chapman is a gun nut living in Daly City. the alt-right has decided that being the yuugest a-holes they can be in the middle of Berkeley will create the proper conditions for them to shoot and kill people and become alt-right heroes while also not going to prison for life.

    A kind of mental illness that living in a bubble can create.

  84. 84.

    efgoldman

    @Major Major Major Major:

    they got rid of mandatory three-strike sentencing for non-violent criminals IIRC but that’s all that has changed.

    IANAL, but organizing a riot or beating people with clubs isn’t non-violent by any definition I understand.

  88. 88.

    GregB

    @efgoldman:

    That photo always gave me the willies.

    We have so many live action images thrown st us now that the iconic photo is a bit of a fading tradition.

  89. 89.

    Suzanne

    Sorry to do this again, but I wanted to share my friend Brad’s gofundme. I have never done this before, but he’s in some pretty dire straits. He’s an Army vet, a single dad who gets no help from his son’s mother, and a hardworking guy who is about to get evicted and lose his car. He’s reached his (very modest) financial goal which will keep a roof over his head, but it would be great if we could get him any sort of breathing room. I hate to ask, but I know that this is a community of good people who will understand. Thanks, y’all.

  90. 90.

    efgoldman

    @Adam L Silverman:

    So you’ll be wanting something from the Haredim line.

    Me? I’m as kosher as a bacon cheeseburger.
    My dad was the oldest of six kids, and the only apostate who didn’t keep kosher after he got married. Mom couldn’t be bothered. Her family were pillars of the temple and B’nai Brith, but the family business was wholesale seafood fresh off the boats, and her dad, uncles and brothers were always bringing home lobster, shrimp, scallops, clams….

  92. 92.

    Another Scott

    @Suzanne: I kicked in some, too. I hope it helps him get on his feet a little quicker, and helps him rest a little easier.

    You’re a good friend for helping out by spreading the word.

    ‘night all.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  94. 94.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Suzanne: Get his resume from him and email it to me. I’ll push it to some defense contractor contacts that may have some better employment options for him so he’s not living on the financial edge. I can’t promise anything, but I can at least get his resume looked at.

  95. 95.

    Mnemosyne

    @Suzanne:

    In the 1940s and 1950s, my dad and aunts were still called “dagoes” to their faces in the suburbs outside of Chicago.

    And anyone who claims that their Italian ancestors came here “the right way” needs to be mocked, because “wop” was an acronym for “with out papers” — basically, people who would show up on the boat from Italy with no passport or documentation.

  96. 96.

    NotMax

    @efgoldman

    One of my grandfather’s (born and reared in a shtetl in Poland in the 19th century) absolute favorite foods was shrimp fried rice.

  98. 98.

    jl

    @Mnemosyne: No. It was a confused mess. I don’t remember any organized evacuation, but I was not a student, so probably was out of the loop. The Ghanaian guy I was visiting with said he thought it was safe enough to go visit his buddy a couple of blocks north of campus, and we stayed there the first night. His buddy and most of the neighbors in the little apartment complex were armed. Then they decided to go on their walking tour to check out how the US locals did their riots and I camped out in the old B-school building. Except I would go to the edge of campus. Except was scared to go south of Exposition, since weird stuff was going on down there. Local Hispanics and African-Americans who wanted to organize some kind of protest march (probably too soon to try that) were getting in fights with rioters who wanted to start fights and burn stuff down. I remember venturing to Figueroa and seeing what looked like a couple of hundred people marching down the middle of the street in my direction, and then suddenly a big fight broke out with some dudes who ran in from the side streets. That scared me back on campus for a while.

    I do remember a lot of students didn’t evacuate no place, they waited in the dorms for their families to come pick them up. You’d see vans roar in from the north, pack up Tiffany or Biff’s stuff and roar back north up Vermont.

    I got worried about my friends, so hung around after the National Guard came and went to the apartment to see if they were back. Which they were. I heard their narrative of the riot further south.

  99. 99.

    Suzanne

    @Mnemosyne: My father is half Italian, and he is a big Dampnut fan, and is a shitty deadbeat father and a misogynist. He is the worst kind of gross Drumpf supporter. And I have zero tolerance, because his grandparents came over with NOTHING.

  100. 100.

    efgoldman

    @Suzanne:

    The shellfish is one of the best parts of living in the Northeast

    A couple of night ago, mrs efg and I drove down to one of the seafood restaurants in Narragansett/Point Judith – literally the other side of the inlet from where the boats unload. Freshest lobster I ever had.

  101. 101.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Suzanne: I have no idea what’s available. I do know that a lot of positions, because of the sequester, now only require a high school degree plus experience. So if there’s a way to match up what he did in the military with one of these, then maybe. I also have a former student from when I was a post-doc who works for a non-profit that does veteran’s support. So I can reach out to her as well and see what she might be able to come up with in terms of support. Finally, I have a former colleague who is now in Vegas. He’s a retired O6 (colonel/captain) and may have some ideas. Again: I can’t promise anything but to try to make some connections that might be helpful.

  103. 103.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Suzanne: I’ll do what I can. My former student, an attorney who works in for the non profit, may be the most immediate assistance. I’ll reach out to her Monday once Easter is over as I know she and her family observe it.

  104. 104.

    Mnemosyne

    @jl:

    They probably didn’t live in student housing — from what I heard, people who stayed in their dorms or other student housing got evacuated. I was in the Parkside dorms that faced Exposition and some poor guy got shot in the leg standing there.

    The campus itself was safe because the campus police were patrolling it and USC had been doing a pretty good job of improving community relationships, so people didn’t have much of a reason to attack us.

    The really freaky thing was when the National Guard finally showed up. Very strange to be grocery shopping under the watchful eye of guys in fatigues holding M-16s.

  107. 107.

    efgoldman

    @NotMax:

    One of my grandfather’s (born and reared in a shtetl in Poland in the 19th century) absolute favorite foods was shrimp fried rice.

    My paternal grandparents came over as adolescents sometime around 1905, met and married in Boston around 1913-1914. Kosher was all they knew, and they lived in largely Jewish neighborhoods until fairly late in life.
    Yet they would eat at our (non-kosher) house regularly, and would eat out at non-kosher restaurants, too. Just wouldn’t order anything obvious like pork or shellfish.
    Some of my more frum cousins, though, would be real pains in the ass about it – wouldn’t even drink a glass of water in our house.
    You, of course, know what I said.

    Yup
    Fuckem

  108. 108.

    jl

    @Mnemosyne: Might be forgotten now, but as you got further north the riot turned into general hooliganism. Nothing to do with Rodney King for civil rights or LAPD at all. Just a general purpose asshole dude’s holiday. Some of the local business owners said that they saw as many USC frat rats rioting as anyone else.

  109. 109.

    Suzanne

    @efgoldman: I remember when I was a kid, we took a ferry across Long Island Sound and ate at this place on the beach in Connecticut where the boats pulled up, unloaded their lobster at this little shack, and then cooked and served it to you right there where you ate at a picnic table. I was too young to appreciate it and lobster freaked me out when it was still in the shell.

    Last time I was in Boston was about eight years ago for a conference. One of my grad school classmates, who is from India, went with me to dinner, and I said, “Okay, but I’m gonna go eat a lobster.” She was horrified, watching me rip it apart. So delicious. One of the things I miss the most about living back on that side of the country.

  113. 113.

    NotMax

    @Suzanne

    Friend here used to work as a sous chef at a fancy seafood place. Tells tales of Japanese tourists coming in and ordering raw lobster, ripping it apart alive to eat.

  114. 114.

    jl

    @Mnemosyne: Yes, I remember going to the 32nd Street (?) market with the National Guard watching everything. It was scary, but things were officially ‘safe’ so I told myself everything was casual and cool. And yes, friends told me that USC being very good with local community paid off. The Ghanaian USC grad student told me a lot of the ‘local militia’ (as he called them) patrols were USC employees who had a stake in keeping USC and local businesses safe. Though if a chain store got looted and burned down, they didn’t care enough to stop it. Which I also saw happen.

  115. 115.

    Major Major Major Major

    @jl:

    Might be forgotten now, but as you got further north the riot turned into general hooliganism. Nothing to do with Rodney King for civil rights or LAPD at all. Just a general purpose asshole dude’s holiday. Some of the local business owners said that they saw as many USC frat rats rioting as anyone else.

    I find this 100% unsurprising.

  116. 116.

    efgoldman

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    The TV folk hover.

    Locally (Providence) the TV stations have given up their (probably leased) choppers in favor of drones with HD cameras. Even if they don’t buy $50 off the shelf equipment, the savings are astronomical. I expect we’ll see that in major markets (maybe we already are) before long.

  117. 117.

    Mnemosyne

    @jl:

    That’s always been well-known locally. It was only the national media who thought it was a “minority” riot. It was so widespread that people even saw yeshiva kids in Fairfax rioting and looting.

  121. 121.

    Mnemosyne

    @jl:

    Ah, the Three-Two. At the time, it was the only market within 10 miles. One of the things that changed for the better post-riots was that the state and Feds were able to get Ralph’s (Kroger) to build a real market for the neighborhood. The 3-2 is long gone now — it couldn’t compete with a real market that didn’t smell like fish. Those damn kids even have an off-campus Starbucks now.

    It’s vaguely possible that I knew one of your friends, because my BFF had a Ghanian TA friend who once made us a really great dinner of peanut chicken soup. I don’t remember if he was a TA for one of her GE classes or her business classes, though.

  124. 124.

    moops

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: If I knew what station it was I’d call them out. It must be a local affiliate. That hovering helicopter makes the protests around here dangerous. Which, I guess, is what a TV station is hoping happens. I wish the city could issue no-fly zones for craft over 50 lbs. Protestors (left or right) think it’s the cops, and both think the cops are against them. Most likely there already are police drones in the area. If the TV stations had to follow suit these protests would be less violent. Am I missing some important civil right to hang out in a helicopter above a city? There is a less disruptive and cheaper alternative technology available that does not disrupt the protestors. Perhaps having media attention being obvious is important? Is there a way to make Channel 17 News Drone obvious to the street folks that want the fifth estate present for their propaganda needs?

  125. 125.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Christ I knew Jimmy Fallon on SNL would be self-indulgent, but that opening number….

  126. 126.

    jl

    @Mnemosyne: Possible. I forget why, but I got plugged into the West African-expat grad student community. There were a lot of them at UCLA and USC. I met very nice and interesting people from Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Senegal.

    I forget the USC guy’s name, but he was an officer in the Ghanian military for a couple of years before he decided to go back to grad school. He chaffed under the restraints of US education. He was a TA and instructor, mostly college algebra and trig and pre-calc. After I was a grad student there I ran into him with some USC students by a flag pole outside the old library. He was conducting what turned out be a failed trigonometry lesson. Students whining about having to learn weird geek shit. He came over to me and said. “These people! In Africa, they admire ‘white brains’! You know, if this were Africa, I could beat them!”

    Edit: but he was very good TA and instructor. Won some awards for teaching. But there were a lot Ghanaians at USC when I was there.

  128. 128.

    jl

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    ” If a chopper is hovering, it ain’t the cops; they keep their aircraft in motion. The TV folk hover. ”

    And how would you know that, goody-two-shoes Thousand Oaks boy?

  133. 133.

    JWR

    Pisses me off that my local SoCal TV news, despite all of the freely available evidence shown in this post, are giving this story maybe 15 to 20 seconds of airtime and simply referring to it as a pro-Trump, anti-Trump fight. No mention of the alt-right, but I’m sure their crack investigative teams are on it! (NOT!) Instead, it’s “hey. look over here, a brand new baby Giraffe!”

    (Apologies to the importance of brand new baby Giraffes everywhere, but geez..)

  136. 136.

    ??‍? Martin

    Does anybody actually believe Sessions will let the FBI go after the alt-right? No, they are free to do as they please, especially in California.

  137. 137.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @JWR: Of course not, the “both sides do it” has been well established in the media for a while about this stuff.

    He’s since become a right-wing folk hero, and, after Berkeley police arrested him on several felony charges, naturally, a right-wing martyr.

    Personally, I really think that’s goal here. They want “proof” to support their fantasy that they are rebels against an oppressive anti-white police state plus the martyr title gets them Bundy style wingnut welfare. This is sort of a logical end game of conservative moment, the sense of entitlement to let their inner asshole out combined with the desperate need to be seen as the victim all comes together with them deliberately proving riots. Curious were this ends because soon Trump and even Bannon will find that they are The Man in the eyes of their followers.

    Also this is really a bit weird when you think about it in conservative terms – running amok like pack of animal in the streets is really what conservatism fears. Yet it oddly makes sense that group of people in a mindless panic would end up doing the very thing they are terrified off.

  138. 138.

    jl

    shocking video of a martyr of the alt-right!

    Face it: @cernovich is a snowflake.
    Funny, too, that he screams “Bill Clinton’s a rapist.” Cernovich literally advocates men “try” rape.

    https://twitter.com/JBA101/status/853510560083849216

    My twitter skills are insufficient to cite this properly. Found through Josh Marshall’s twitter. This is Joseph Adams’ tweet with shocking video link from another tweet.

    Anyway, shocking!

    Edit: here’s hoping that most of the alt-righters turn out to be such hapless clowns.

  141. 141.

    Howard Beale IV

    And of course, who else but the bearded bros, the white supremacist duo of the Rage Furby himself, Charles C. Johnson and his misogynistic muppet, Pax Dickinson, using their grifting website WeSearchr as a funding conduit! What a racket!

  142. 142.

    piratedan

    part of the worry is that the cops are sympathetic to the “causes” of the alt-right already. Based on the violence and harassment of minorities we see around the nation, I would be less than optimistic that the thin blue line will “do the right thing” in a LOT of constituencies. The fact that this is going down in fucking Berkeley makes me think that these guys are flexing their muscle to “step in” if things go awry for the current administration and their found to actually being guilty of treason, as well as a sanctimonious disregard for the law or the rights of others.

    We already know that these fuckers are armed, violent and ready to provoke conflict and apparently, as long as you’re white, you can apparently stay out of jail too.

  145. 145.

    Elizabelle

    I like this Caroline of RVAwonk.

    What is her background? Is she from Richmond, VA? (Which we call RVA.)

  150. 150.

    low-tech cyclist

    Stick Man, by Julia Donaldson, with illustrations by Axel Scheffler. A GREAT kids’ story.

    This bastard can’t have that name. It’s already taken, thankyewverymuch.

  151. 151.

    Currants

    @Origuy: That was WONDERFUL. Thank you! Man, I love the comments sections on B-J sometimes! (This one was particularly good–giggling at all the chocolate rabbi jokes was a good way to start the day too.)

  152. 152.

    M31

    @Major Major Major Major: the weird and excellent book “The Man Who was Thursday” by Chesterton is about a secret anarchist group which it turns out is all police infiltrators (except for “Sunday”)

  156. 156.

    Raven Onthill

    Hunh. An actual false-flag operation. What they claim is done to them, they do.

    The California prosecutors are unlikely to leave these alone, regardless of what Sessions (who by the way has just made an admiring comment about Bannon) does.

  157. 157.

    J R in WV

    @Suzanne:

    I kicked in a little bit too, hope he gets back on his feet. Those who have, owe it to others who helped them out once.

  158. 158.

    Zinsky

    A friend of mine says that Trump brings out the worst in everyone. I think that is true. It’s just that the political right has so much more bad in it than the political right…

  159. 159.

    J R in WV

    @efgoldman:

    First lobster I ever even saw was when we visited a WV friend’s place in Maine where he came from. We rowed out into the bay, lifted up a cage where a local lobsterman kept some for his friends to help themselves and pay him whenever.

    All you could eat, with fresh corn on the cob and potato salad, and ice cold beers the summer I went away to college the first time. Sweet. Summer of ’68.

  160. 160.

    barb2

    @jl:
    The SF tv media has always been lazy. First Earth Day at San Jose University. What really happened and the talking heads of tv land were very different. I watched the media screw up the news to fit their world view that all protests and protesters were evil.

    Nothing really changes.

  161. 161.

    Suffragete City elftx

    Thread probably dead but wanted to point out Stewart Rhodes as noted in Adams post at #24 is with 3%’s of Idaho. A number of them were there yesterday as pointed out by John Sepulvado @JohnLGC to protect the nazi’s.

Comments are closed.