He's a traitor, according to MAGA, because he didn't say thank you after being brutally beaten on 1/6/21. If they are coming for this guy and his family, they will come for anyone. #tyranny #militias
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2025/01/27/michael-fanone-jan-6-pardons
Is there anyone in the fediverse who hasn’t read this extraordinary story? Just in case, we’re posting it here. It’s about John Williams, a man who infiltrated right-wing militia, and then shared what he found exclusively with @ProPublica. “Williams turned on a recording device and dialed. [Retired detective Bobby] Kinch picked up after one ring: ‘What’s going on?’ he bellowed. ‘How you doing, man?’ ‘I don’t know if you remember me,’ Kinch continued, but they’d met years before … ‘Well I’m the sitting, current national director of the Oath Keepers now.’”
https://www.propublica.org/article/ap3-oath-keepers-militia-mole
The reporter who wrote the big @ProPublica militia story was interviewed on Democracy Now today
#militia #militias #Threepers #ThreePercenters #ProudBoys #PissBoys #Fascist #Fascism #Antifascist #Antifascism
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/7/the_militia_and_the_mole
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yok7V3fVgUE
The #Militia & the Mole: How a #Freelance Vigilante :Infiltrated U.S. #Militias
A mole spent years infiltrating right-wing militias, never telling his family or the police. Here’s what he found.
https://www.propublica.org/article/ap3-oath-keepers-militia-mole
Scary stuff. The militias are out to end America. #Militias #MAGA #GOP #Trump
Simply stunning and horrifying. Thank you Joshua Kaplan. "Sowing that distrust is why Williams is going on the record, albeit without his original name. He still plans to release thousands of files after this article is published — evidence tying sheriffs and police officers to the movement, his proudest coup, plus other records he hopes could become ammo for lawsuits."
Simply stunning and horrifying. Thank you Joshua Kaplan. "Sowing that distrust is why Williams is going on the record, albeit without his original name. He still plans to release thousands of files after this article is published — evidence tying sheriffs and police officers to the movement, his proudest coup, plus other records he hopes could become ammo for lawsuits."
#January6th #militias #OathKeepers #extremism
This is a shocking, breathtaking, and pretty frightening story. 
A Mole Infiltrated the Highest Ranks of American Militias. This Is What He Found.
"Outraged by the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, a wilderness survival trainer spent years undercover climbing the ranks of right-wing militias. He didn’t tell police or the FBI. He didn’t tell family or friends. The one person he told was a ProPublica reporter."
https://www.propublica.org/article/ap3-oath-keepers-militia-mole
A good read. Scary, as it shows the monsters are real.
https://www.propublica.org/article/ap3-oath-keepers-militia-mole
This is one of the most gripping and informative articles I've read in some time – incredible work @josh-kaplan.bsky.social @propublica.org
https://www.propublica.org/article/ap3-oath-keepers-militia-mole
Long article, but worth reading from @ProPublica
A wilderness survival trainer spent years undercover, climbing the ranks of right-wing #militias.
He penetrated a new generation of militia leaders, which included doctors and #government attorneys.
He sent ProPublica a massive trove of documents. The conversations that he secretly recorded give a unique, startling window into the militia movement.
Trump says he’ll pardon Jan 6 felons, this illegal order could lead to violence, as #militias are empowered.
“Experts warn that could trigger a renaissance for militant extremists, sending them an unprecedented message of protection & support. The infiltrator is John Williams.”
He revealed how the paramilitary mvt operates, & dangers the members pose.
The founder of a major 3 Percenter militia he infiltrated declined to comment- sent a follow-up email: “MAGA.”
#USPol
https://www.propublica.org/article/ap3-oath-keepers-militia-mole
Reporting Highlights
A Freelance Vigilante: A wilderness survival trainer spent years undercover, climbing the ranks of right-wing militias. He didn’t tell police or the FBI. He didn’t tell his family or friends.
The Future of Militias: He penetrated a new generation of militia leaders, which included doctors and government attorneys. Experts say that militias could have a renaissance under Donald Trump.
A Secret Trove: He sent ProPublica a massive trove of documents. The conversations that he secretly recorded give a unique, startling window into the militia movement.
https://www.propublica.org/article/ap3-oath-keepers-militia-mole
"In the daylight, Williams dropped an envelope with no return address in a U.S. Postal Service mailbox. He’d loaded it with a flash drive and a gold Oath Keepers medallion.
It was addressed to me.
The documents laid out a remarkable odyssey. Posing as an ideological compatriot, Williams had penetrated the top ranks of two of the most prominent right-wing militias in the country. He’d slept in the home of the man who claims to be the new head of the Oath Keepers, rifling through his files in the middle of the night. He’d devised elaborate ruses to gather evidence of militias’ ties to high-ranking law enforcement officials. He’d uncovered secret operations like the surveillance of a young journalist, then improvised ways to sabotage the militants’ schemes. In one group, his ploys were so successful that he became the militia’s top commander in the state of Utah.
Now he was a fugitive. He drove south toward a desert four hours from the city, where he could disappear."
https://www.propublica.org/article/ap3-oath-keepers-militia-mole
Well. uhn, this is alarming. [ProPublica]: The Militia and the Mole by Joshua Kaplan,January 4, 2024
A Freelance Vigilante: A wilderness survival trainer spent years undercover, climbing the ranks of right-wing militias. He didn’t tell police or the FBI. He didn’t tell his family or friends.
https://www.propublica.org/article/ap3-oath-keepers-militia-mole
X, the social media platform formerly known as #Twitter, said today that it’s
ending operations in Brazil,
although the service will remain available to users in the country.
The announcement comes amidst a legal battle with Brazil’s Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who sought to
block certain accounts on X as part of an 
️investigation into election #disinformation and “#digital #militias.”️
https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/17/x-says-its-closing-operations-in-brazil/
#Vance sits somewhere in between these two tendencies
—at 37, he’s a venture capitalist who is young enough to be exposed to the dissident online currents.
But he’s also shaped by the most deeply traditionalist thinking of the American right.
He is friends with #Yarvin,
whom he openly cites as a political influence,
and with #Dreher,
who was there when Vance was baptized into the Catholic Church in 2019.
I’d been writing about #militias and right-wing stirrings in the #rural #West for years,
but I didn’t really understand how this alchemy worked until I first met him last July.
I’d gone back to Ohio to see my uncle, who was dying of cancer.
Vance and I both grew up around Cincinnati,
immersed in a culture of
white rural migrants who had come from coalfields and farm towns
to look for work in the cities of the Midwest.
We had met as a kind of experiment
—I was going to be in town anyway,
and because my uncle was sick,
I was thinking a lot about the place and what it meant to me.
On a whim, I asked an editor at a conservative magazine if I could write something from the perspective of a skeptical leftist.
Vance suggested that we meet at a diner where my dad had often taken me as a kid.
He was barely registering in the polls at the time.
Vance believes that a 
well-educated and culturally liberal American elite
has greatly benefited from globalization,
the financialization of our economy,
and the growing power of big tech.
This has led an Ivy League intellectual and management class
—a quasi-aristocracy he calls
“the regime”
—to adopt a set of economic and cultural interests that directly oppose those of people in places like Middletown, Ohio, where he grew up.
In the Vancian view, this class has no stake in what people on the New Right often call the “real economy”
—the farm and factory jobs that once sustained middle-class life in Middle America.
This is a fundamental difference between New Right figures like Vance and the Reaganite right-wingers of their parents’ generation.
To Vance—and he’s said this—culture war is class warfare.
Vance recently told an interviewer, “I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine,”
a flick at the fact that he thinks the American-led global order is as much about enriching defense contractors and think-tank types as it is about defending America’s interests.
“I do care about the fact that in my community right now
the leading cause of death among 18- to 45-year-olds
is Mexican fentanyl.”
His criticisms of big tech as “enemies of Western civilization”
often get lost in the run of Republican outrage over Trump being kicked off Twitter and Facebook,
though they go much deeper than this.
Vance believes that the regime has sold an illusive story that consumer gadgets and social media are constantly making our lives better,
even as wages stagnate and technology feeds an epidemic of depression.
What is going on with Nassau County? A mask ban and a militia? Don't forget the northeast has ultraright politicians too!
A Trump Ally Is Training 75 Armed Citizens. Is That a Militia? - GV Wire
https://gvwire.com/2024/07/11/a-trump-ally-is-training-75-armed-citizens-is-that-a-militia/
