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'DANGEROUS FOOLS'

Deputy sheriff mocks BLM, hates gay people, loves Confederate flag

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Josh Wilson police, homophobia, racism, Clarksville, Tennessee, fired, sheriff deputy

Josh Wilson, a 26-year-old, sheriff’s deputy in Clarksville, Tennessee, was recently fired for social media posts he made expressing hatred for gay people and the rainbow flag, love for Andrew Jackson (the U.S. President who committed genocide against Native Americans) and mockery for the Black Lives Matter movement.

Wilson was hired by the local police department in 2016, two years before it started reviewing applicants’ social media profiles as part of their background check process. If they had, they would’ve seen Wilson’s troubling statements, which we’ve included below with our rebuttals:

“I hate gay people.”

Since 4.5 percent of all Americans identify as LGBTQ, that means Wilson immediately hates 7,056 citizens in his city of nearly 156,800 people, even before meeting them. This bodes ill if they ever call for police assistance.

“Yes Harriet Tubman deserves to be on some money. She was a great woman in American history. But why penalize Andrew Jackson? He was a great man in American history.”

Harriet Tubman, an anti-slavery abolitionist and strategist in the Civil War, is supposed to replace former-President Jackson on $20 bills in 2030. Regardless, Jackson was not a great American — he was a champion of Native American genocide.

Jackson was a slave owner who instructed the U.S. postmaster general to censor anti-slavery mailings. Through treaties that dishonestly promised land and money that never came, he forced countless Native Americans to march off their homelands and into tiny reservations; his infamous “Trail of Tears” killed thousands of Native Americans due to hunger, exposure, disease and accidents.

“It blows my mind that people don’t find it disrespectful to change the colors of the American flag from red, white and blue to rainbow-colored, but they find it disrespectful to have a confederate flag just because you’re from the south.”

The rainbow flag is a queer emblem of LGBTQ people who take pride in their unique diversity while fighting for equal rights — it represents tolerance and the fight for equality. The confederate flag is a racist emblem of slave-owning white supremacists who literally declared war against the U.S. government over the “right” to own, sell, rape and kill black people for money— it is a flag of anti-U.S. sentiment and racism, which is why the U.S. military and cities have started opposing the flying of the flag and other Confederate monuments.

As Hornet notes in its takedown of people who compare the rainbow and confederate flags, Confederate flags are not merely about Southern Pride and “heritage, not hate”:

The Washington Post pointed out, “The Confederate flag largely disappeared after the Civil War. The fight against civil rights brought it back.” And guess who brought it back? Southern white supremacists who opposed Civil Rights-era legislation meant to integrate blacks into white schools and neighborhoods.

A gay man invented the rainbow flag as a way to create solidarity and visibility for the LGBTQ community. The flag was a plea for acceptance and tolerance. It was never about silencing or terrorizing anyone.

It’s also worth noting that the actual Confederacy lasted only five years — the ’90s grunge band Nirvana was around longer than that. Sadly, racism never seems to go out of style.

“Question of the day. If you run over all these people blocking roadways protesting are they gonna call the cops for attempted murder? The people they are protesting against?”

Running over protestors has become a troublingly common right-wing tactic against anti-racist demonstrators. While Wilson didn’t endorse it as a tactic, he misunderstands the goal of Black Lives Matter (BLM) protestors. While some BLM protestors want to abolish or defund the police, they mostly want to end anti-Black policing, criminalization and penal policies that have harmed Black Americans for decades.

As such, the BLM protests aren’t necessarily “anti-police”, they’re anti-racist. Even communities that seek to reform, defund or disband police still acknowledge that some sort of civil peacekeeping and accountability group will be necessary to protect the innocent and restore justice; especially if slam their vehicles into Americans expressing their First Amendment rights to assembly and free speech.

By reducing BLM protestors to being anti-police, Wilson essentially paints them as being against “law and order”, which they really aren’t.

Oh well, Wilson won’t be policing for his community anymore after his posts were discovered.

“It is my job to protect our citizens and enforce the law impartially and without prejudice. In order to accomplish this, I have to have confidence that our deputies share those same values,” said Clarksville Police Department Sheriff John Fuson. “The posts made on social media, do not reflect the character or values of this office.”

“Had these posts been noticed then, the deputy would not have been considered for employment. In light of this incident, more resources will be added to ensure deeper social media background checks,” Sheriff Fuson continued. “Hopefully together we can move forward from this incident.”

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'DANGEROUS FOOLS'

QAnon Congresswoman Talks with White Supremacist to Praise Her & Jan. 6 Coup Attempt

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Marjorie Taylor Greene and Katie Hopkins

Georgia Republican House Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a woman who thinks a “Jewish space laser” stared this summer’s wildfires on the West Coast and that all school shootings are fake, recently sat for an interview with Katie Hopkins,  a far-right, Islamophobic white supremacist who has compared migrants to “cockroaches” and “feral humans” (the former of which was used by Nazis and perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide) and also supported the “Defend Europe” campaign which has proclaimed the continent as a white one.

In the interview, which reportedly took place on January 7, the day after Trump’s supporters held an attempted coup on the U.S. Capitol to overturn the results of the November 2020 national elections, had Hopkins telling Greene, “On behalf of so many of us who look to this place for hope and look to Trump for hope, you are that. And what you did was so brave and made a difference to so many people and so I personally wanted to say thank you for being that person.”

In response, Greene says, “Thank you, thank you Katie. Thank you so much. That’s so nice,” Greene says in response. “Yeah, it was a hard thing we did yesterday, but I wouldn’t do anything else. I wouldn’t do anything else. I would love to trade you for some of our right people here who have no appreciation for our country. And I’m grateful, truly grateful.”

While it’s unclear what exactly Greene is referring to when she said “it was a hard thing we did yesterday,” it could either mean voting against certifying President Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 elections or it could mean the attempted coup on the U.S. Capitol.

Greene is currently facing calls to resign because of her embrace of far-right conspiracy theories, including the repeatedly debunked theory that an unprecedented national conspiracy of widespread voter fraud somehow “stole” the election from former President Donald Trump.

She also believes that the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center were an inside job, has advocated for the murder of former President Barack Obama and Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and thinks that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton once sliced off a child’s face and wore it before drinking the child’s blood.

Republicans recently placed Greene on the House Committee on Education and Labor. They have remained silent about Greene’s past social media behavior and her recent interview with a white supremacist.

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'DANGEROUS FOOLS'

GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy Says “Everyone” Is to Blame for Capitol Riots

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While Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California has previously said that he thinks former President Donald Trump bears some responsibility for the January 6 coup attempt in which his supporters ransacked the Capitol to overturn the election that he and Republicans baselessly claimed was stolen, McCarthy added in a Thursday interview, “I also think everybody across this country has some responsibility [for the coup attempt.]”

McCarthy then said that anti-Trump Democrats, rude social media users, unprepared law enforcement authorities were all responsible too, even though Trump literally told his followers on the morning of January 6 to march to the Capitol and fight to stop legislators from approving the election victory of now-President Joe Biden. 

“I think this is what we have to get to the bottom of, and when you start talking about who has responsibilities,” McCarthy said. “I think there’s going to be a lot more questions, a lot more answers we have to have in the coming future.”

It’s especially telling that his Senate counterpart, now-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has directly blamed Trump for the riots.

“The mob was fed lies,” McConnell said Wednesday. “They were provoked by the president and other powerful people, and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like.” 

After months of making baseless claims that a national conspiracy of widespread voter fraud stole the election from him, a claim laughed out of courts 60 times over for lack of evidence by judges that Trump himself appointed, Trump held a “Stop the Steal” rally on the morning of January 6 in which he said, that he won the election “by a landslide” and encouraged his followers to “stop the steal” by going to the Capitol. If people don’t “fight like hell,” Trump said, “you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

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'DANGEROUS FOOLS'

GOP Rep Andy Harris Tried to Bring a Concealed Gun Into the Capitol House Chamber

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Andy Harris, Maryland, gun, capitol

Republican Representative Andy Harris of Maryland was recently prevented from entering the House chamber at the U.S. Capitol after a metal detector indicated that he had a concealed gun on him while trying to enter, something that is forbidden by security rules.

A spokesperson for Harris said, “As a matter of public record, he has a Maryland handgun permit and the congressman always complies with the house metal detectors and wanding. The congressman has never carried a firearm on the House floor.”

However, it’s remarkable that Harris tried it at all, as Democratic legislators say that they have felt increasingly unsafe around their Republican colleagues in the day following the Republican-led January 6 coup attempt in which insurrectionists stormed the Capitol in hopes of killing those who refused to give former President Donald Trump an undeserved second term.

About 139 House Republicans and 8 Senate Republicans voted on January 6 against certifying Biden’s Electoral College victory. While some have admitted off-the-record that they only voted that way in fear of being targeted for violence by Trump’s supporters, one Republican in particular, Congresswoman and QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, has previously suggested that she herself would personally gun down the progressive female House members of color known as “the Squad.”

The House had metal detectors installed following the January 6 coup attempt, but Republicans began walking past them and ignoring guards stationed at them. In response, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said any politicians who do such things will be fined $5,000 or more.

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