‘The Vigilant Patriots Page on Facebook Pushes a Vicious Mix of Agitprop and Conspiracy Theory’
President-elect Donald Trump’s newly-appointed Chief White House Strategist and senior advisor Steve Bannon appears to be a member of a far right extremist Facebook group that posts racist memes, including ones that call for a military coup of President Barack Obama’s administration. Mother Jones discovered Bannon’s membership in the group and was the first to report it in an article Friday afternoon titled, “Here’s Evidence Steve Bannon Joined a Facebook Group That Posts Racist Rants and Obama Death Threats.”
“This material,” Mother Jones reports, “includes posts urging a military coup against President Barack Obama, featuring an image of the president dressed as an SS officer, celebrating the Confederate flag, highlighting a photoshopped picture of Obama with watermelons, praising a police officer who called Obama a ‘F*cking Nigger,’ and calling for Obama to be ‘executed as a traitor.'”
Membership to the group appears to be open and it appears anyone who is a member can post.
The group posts articles that espouse anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, racist, pro-Trump rhetoric.
Mother Jones describes the group as “a collection of right-wing Facebookers, including members who hail militias and decry Muslims, immigration, progressives, sellout Republicans, and the president with hateful, violent, and racist rhetoric. It has an active Twitter feed that is virulently anti-Islam.”
That’s not all.
“The Vigilant Patriots page on Facebook pushes a vicious mix of agitprop and conspiracy theory,” Mother Jones continues. “It has published calls to arrest, impeach, and execute Obama. A 2012 post declared that Obama must be arrested as a ‘terrorist’ for ‘Treason, Espionage, Sedition and Fraud’ and derided him as ‘an Illegal Commander-in-Chief.’ A long anti-Obama rant from a member in 2011 called for hanging the ‘traitor.’ A different member referred to Obama as ‘the muzzie usurping lying POS traitor.’ (‘Muzzie’ is a derogatory term for a Muslim.) A group member in 2013 said Obama ‘must be tried, convicted, and executed as a traitor.’ One member railed, Obama ‘still occupies the office because white members of Congress are too afraid of being branded racist to file Articles of Impeachment against him. It’s time to stop the charade. He is destroying America. Black, White, Green, Brown, or Purple, the man is a traitor. IMPEACHMENT NOW!'”
Mother Jones notes “there is always the chance an account could be a spoof or phony,” but they detail the lengths they went to to ensure as best they can that it is Bannon’s.
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