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RIGHT WING EXTREMISM

‘Obviously a White Supremacist’: Researcher Posts Nazi Images Allegedly From Allen, TX Mass Shooter’s Social Media

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A researcher with the well-respected group Bellingcat has posted to Twitter what he says are images from the Allen, Texas mass shooter’s account on a Russian social media platform. On Saturday a gunman shot and killed eight people between the ages of 5 and 61 at an outlet mall.

The posts and photos are filled with unmistakeable Nazi or neo-Nazi symbols and images. One photo even has the word “Nazi” in it. Another, “white supremacist.”

Bellingcat is a Netherlands-based investigative journalism organization founded in 2014. The researcher, Aric Toler, is Bellingcat’s Director of Training & Research. He was profiled by VANITY FAIR last month after helping The New York Times find the suspected Pentagon leaker.

“Took a while, but I found the Odnoklassniki profile of the Allen. [sic] TX shooter described in this NYT article,” Toler writes. Odnoklassniki is a Russian social media platform.

“Investigators trying to learn why a gunman fatally shot at least eight people at a Texas mall are examining a social media profile, rife with hate-filled rants against women and Black people, that they believe belonged to the gunman,” The Times article begins. “The profile, found on the social media site OK.RU, matches the gunman’s birthday and refers to a motel where he was staying before the shooting. The profile also includes language praising Hitler, with references to neo-Nazi websites like The Daily Stormer.”

READ MORE: Bombshell Paper Shows Democrats Likely Won’t Regain Majority Control of Supreme Court Until 2065 – Unless They Expand It

Toler links to a YouTube account he says is the shooter’s. It has just one video, titled, “PsycoVision face reveal M Garcia.”

The suspect has been identified by police as 33-year old Mauricio Garcia. That account’s logo is a yellow smiley-face with a “Hitler” mustache.

“Worth noting that he uploaded this video before the shooting, and scheduled for it to be published onto his YouTube channel after the shooting. In a March post, he linked to the same YouTube channel, so it’s definitely his,” Toler writes later, linking to that YouTube video.

“At the shooting on Saturday, the gunman was wearing a patch that said ‘RWDS,’ an abbreviation known to stand for ‘Right Wing Death Squad,’ according to one official,” The Times also reports. “The phrase harks back to Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s violent right-wing regime in Chile in the 1970s and 1980s. The Pinochet government was notorious for assembling death squads that murdered their leftist enemies.”

Toler posted an image of a bullet-proof vest with a RWDS patch and logos from “The Punisher.”

One image Toler posted shows a shirtless man’s torso, with a very large Nazi swastika tattoo on his left upper chest, and an even larger Nazi “SS” tattoo on his right bicep. There is also a large tattoo in the shape of the state of Texas, with the word “Texas” written on it, on his right shoulder.

It has been viewed 2.5 million times in just two hours.

“I wonder if the Allen, TX [shooter] was a white supremacist?” Toler sarcastically asks. “If only there was a post that he made himself where we could find out, in context of him being Latino himself.”

READ MORE: Watch: Texas Lawmaker Who Suggested God Is Responsible for Mall Mass Shooting Wants More Guns at Shopping Outlet

He includes a screenshot, presumably from Garcia’s social media page, that shows drawing of a forked road, on side reads “car black” the other, “become white supremacist.” The caption reads in part, “I think I’ll take my chances with the white supremacist.”

Toler also posts four images of what appear to be a Nazi wedding, captioned, “My kind of people.” Toler, again sarcastically, writes: “I guess we’ll never know if this guy was a liberal or fascist or anything else, oh well.”

Toler also suggests Garcia was a “violent incel,” saying the term “has lost a lot of meaning in the last few years” because it has been “so overused. But yeah it fits here.”

Pointing to TikTok images or videos, Toler writes: “The Allen shooter was apparently a @timcast fan.” @timcast is former VICE journalist Tim Pool. The Southern Poverty Law Center in 2021 described Pool as “a pro-Trump social media personality,” who “uses his YouTube show to showcase far-right extremists such as Enrique Tarrio of the Proud Boys and the neo-Nazi collaborator Jack Posobiec. Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), a non-partisan group that includes researchers from Stanford University and the University of Washington, listed Pool among a group of verified Twitter ‘superspreaders’ who pushed disinformation to Twitter following the 2020 election.”

Responding to someone who claims he has not proven these are from the shooter, Toler writes: “He literally posted multiple identification cards with his name and face, pictures of receipts with his name and city, and photos of the mall where he carried out his mass shooting a few weeks before he did it. He also posted a manifesto/suicide note right before the shooting.”

Toler adds: “One last thing, noticed by @JakeGodin: the Allen shooter was a big fan of @libsoftiktok and signed off on one of his posts with ‘Heil Hitler.”

He concludes: “The Allen shooter was obviously a white supremacist / neo-Nazi. He was basically announcing that he was going to do a mass shooting for months beforehand, and planned his target weeks in advance.”

NCRM will not embed the images or link to them directly, but Toler’s Twitter account is here.

 

 

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Rep. Tim Walberg Tells Uganda to ‘Stand Firm’ on ‘Kill The Gays’ Law Ted Cruz Called ‘Horrific’

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Tim Walberg Uganda Kill The Gays Law

Representative Tim Walberg (R-MI) delivered a speech in Uganda to defend the country’s President Yoweri Museveni and the Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2023, better known as the “Kill the Gays” law.

Walberg traveled to Uganda in October to attend a national prayer breakfast organized by the Fellowship Foundation, also known as The Family, which also covered the cost of his trip, according to TYT. In the speech, transcribed by the blog Take Care Tim, he told the attendees to “stand firm” in the face of criticism.

“Whose side do we want to be on? God’s side. Not the World Bank, not the United States of America necessarily, not the UN. God’s side,” Walberg said. “I think as we go on here, it says, ‘So I will deliver you from the hand of the wicked, And I will redeem you from the grasp of the violent.’ – Who’s gonna do that? God is gonna do that. Your esteemed President, his excellency, President Museveni needs a nation that stands with him and says, though the rest of the world is pushing back on you, though there are other major countries that are trying to get into you and ultimately change you, stand firm. Stand firm.”

READ MORE: Mike Johnson Once Agreed to Speak at ‘Kill the Gays’ Pastor’s Conference – Until an NCRM Report

Walberg made it clear he knew his view would be unpopular in the United States.

“Now, this will probably get back to the national media in the United States, and I expect some pushback, but I’m not gonna give in to them. … I know that your President is a warrior. I like that about him. We’re in a battle, folks. We are in a battle,” he said.

Though Uganda has had homophobia enshrined in its legal code since it was a British protectorate, the Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2023 is a drastic escalation. Previously, homosexuality was punished with life in prison, according to the Advocate. The new law allows the death penalty for those convicted of “aggravated homosexuality.” It also bans “promotion of homosexuality,” much like Russia bans queer “propaganda”.

The law is so draconian that Republican Senator Ted Cruz—no ally to the queer communitycondemned it. In May, shortly after Museveni signed the law, Cruz called the law “horrific” on X, formerly Twitter.

This Uganda law is horrific & wrong. Any law criminalizing homosexuality or imposing the death penalty for ‘aggravated homosexuality’ is grotesque & an abomination. ALL civilized nations should join together in condemning this human rights abuse. #LGBTQ,” Cruz tweeted.

Attempts to pass a similar bill to the Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2023 started in 2014, with a bill also called the “Kill the Gays” law. That form of the bill was built by anti-LGBTQ activist Scott Lively, who previously claimed then-President Barack Obama was secretly gay.

While it didn’t go into effect then, the bill and ones like it kept popping up on Uganda’s parliamentary agenda. Earlier this year, President Joe Biden threatened to cut nearly $1 billion in annual aid to Uganda if the bill passed.

A previous version of this story credited Salon with the initial reporting; Salon had republished the article from TYT. The sourcing has been corrected; NCRM regrets the error.

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Federal Judge Issues Injunction on Idaho Anti-Trans Law Days Before It Takes Effect

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A federal judge issued an injunction Tuesday against an Idaho anti-trans law that would bar prescribing puberty blockers to transgender youth.

The Idaho anti-trans law, House Bill 71, was signed into law by Republican Governor Brad Little last April, according to the Idaho Statesman. It was scheduled take effect on January 1, 2024. Providing gender-affirming care to minors, including puberty blockers, hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgeries would become a felony under the law. This is even though it is exceedingly rare for a person under 18 to be offered these type of surgeries, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday, stopping the Idaho anti-trans law from taking effect in less than a week. Winmill said that the pending lawsuit filed by two trans minors and their parents will most likely succeed, citing the 14th Amendment, according to the Statesman.

READ MORE: ‘I’m Suing’: Montana Democrat Silenced by Republicans in Battle Over Transgender Health Care Files Lawsuit

“Time and again, these cases illustrate that the 14th Amendment’s primary role is to protect disfavored minorities and preserve our fundamental rights from legislative overreach,” he wrote. “That was true for newly freed slaves following the Civil War. It was true in the 20th century for women, people of color, interracial couples and individuals seeking access to contraception. And it is no less true for transgender children and their parents in the 21st century.”

Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador told the paper he will appeal the injunction. Labrador claims “Winmill’s ruling places children at risk of irreversible harm.” The use of the phrase “irreversible harm” echoes the anti-trans book Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier. Shrier’s book endorses the since-debunked theory of “rapid-onset gender dysphoria.” The theory claims girls will declare themselves to be transgender as part of a “social contagion”—basically comparing transitioning to a fad.

Winmill, appointed to the Idaho district court in 1995 by President Bill Clinton, has recently ruled in other pivotal culture-war cases. This August, Winmill blocked Labrador from prosecuting doctors who send patients out-of-state for an abortion, KMVT-TV reported.

In August 2022, he also issued an injunction stopping Labrador from prosecuting ER doctors who provide an abortion in attempts to stabilize a patient, according to the Idaho Capital Sun, while a suit against the law.works its way through the court system. The injunction was overturned by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in September of this year, according to the Capital Sun, though the lawsuit itself is still pending.

 

 

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RIGHT WING EXTREMISM

Mike Johnson Likens Himself to Moses, Tells Christian Nationalists God Charted His Path to Speaker

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Mike Johnson, delivering the keynote address to a far-right Christian nationalist group Tuesday, likened himself to Moses and declared God had charted his path to become the Republican Speaker of the House, after telling him in his prayers to prepare.

Speaker Johnson, a Christian nationalist who falsely claims the Constitution’s separation of church and state is a “misnomer” and has declared the United States is not democracy but a “biblical” republic, is an attorney who once worked for a far-right organization that has since been designated an anti-LGBTQ extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Johnson was the lead sponsor last year of a federal “Don’t Say Gay” bill and has bragged that he and his teenaged son are accountability partners in a no-porn pledge that includes installation of monitoring software on all their devices.

“I’ll tell you a secret since the media is not here,” Speaker Johnson said at the National Association of Christian Lawmakers (NACL) Gala (video below), where he was honored with their American Patriot Award for Christian Honor and Courage, as Right Wing Watch reported.

“Thank you for not allowing the media in, I’ll tell you a secret because they wanted to come because they wanted to, you know, take my comments out of context as they’ve been doing with with great joy for the last few weeks,” Johnson charged, not specifying which of his remarks he believes have been taken out of context.

READ MORE: Jim Comer Decimated by NBC Reporter in ‘Under Two Minutes’

“The Lord impressed upon my heart a few weeks before this happened, that something was going to occur,” Johnson continued. “And the Lord very specifically told me in my prayers to prepare, but to wait. ‘Prepare for what?’ I said to the Lord. You know, I had this sense that we were going to come to a Red Sea moment in our Republican conference and the country at large.”

“And look, I’m a Southern Baptist, I don’t want to get too spooky on you. Okay, but you know, you know okay,” he continued. “All right. But you know, the Lord speaks to your heart. And He had been speaking to me about this and the Lord told me very clearly to prepare and be ready. Be ready for what? Okay, I don’t know. We’re coming to a Red Sea moment. ‘What does that mean, Lord?’ And then when the Speaker’s race happened.”

He said, “the Lord began to wake me up through this three-week process we’re in in the middle of night and to speak to me and to write things down plans and procedures and ideas on how we could pull the conference together.”

“Now at the time I assumed the Lord is going to choose a new Moses. And oh, thank you the Lord. Lord, you’re gonna allow me to be Aaron to Moses,” Johnson told the attendees.

Johnson reminded his audience of the Speaker’s debacle, going down the line of friends who he tried to help become Speaker, acknowledging that all of them failed.

READ MORE: ‘Does America Need More God?’: Mike Johnson Laments LGBTQ High School Kids

He continued, explaining that “at the end, when it came to the end, the Lord said, ‘Now step forward.’ ‘Me? I’m supposed to be Aaron.’ Now the Lord said, ‘Step forward.’ Psalm 77 speaks of the Exodus in the 14th chapter of Exodus and it says, ‘Only God saw the path through the roiling sea, we could not see it, men could not see it.’ And I believe deep in my heart, is my core conviction, that God wants us to seek Him for the path through the roiling sea.”

As Right Wing Watch reports, after Johnson’s speech, “NACL founder Jason Rapert presented Johnson with the Honor and Courage award, along with a piece of a destroyed Ten Commandments monument that Rapert had placed in front of the Arkansas state capitol in 2017.”

“’It’s very obvious to see, you’re one of us,’ Rapert told Johnson.”

Rolling Stone adds that Johnson’s speech Tuesday is “just the latest evidence that the politician who is now second in line for the presidency views himself as on a divine mission.”

Watch the video of Speaker Johnson below or at this link.

READ MORE: Mike Johnson Once Fought to Block a Married Same-Sex Family’s Adoption: Report

 

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