I don’t understand the lack of interest by journalists. What more did Williams need to do the first time he reached out to garner interest? Does ProPublica overestimate the seriousness of the militia movement? I’d think based on J6 the journalists ignoring Williams’ communications should have paid attention.
Infinite Luigis Theory:<p>I get a sense that we are beginning to see a resurgence in lone-wolf style operator activism and crime (or terrorism, etc., depending on your view of things), sort of like was more common 30+ years ago, a la the Unibomber, Skyjacker, all of the serial killers in the 60-80s.<p>The reasons of “why now” and “why lone wolf” are complicated but mostly boil down to high availability of information (awareness of opsec) and relatively low trust amongst social groups and of institutions, coupled with a more online and more destabilized male demographic the younger you go.
> Sowing that distrust is why Williams is going on the record, albeit without his original name<p>I don’t understand this. There’s an insane level of detail here that if true immediately reveals his identity to those involved. How does withholding his name change anything?<p>> On March 20… He’d helped persuade Seddon and his lieutenants to fire the head of AP3’s Utah chapter and to install Williams in his place.
This post makes me wonder why videos of militias training always look so farcical.<p>Practically, why are there not militia groups with Navy SEAL/Delta-level tactical abilities? Or at least near to that? Is it personnel selection effects or bc that level of training requires time/money investments that are out of the reach of non-professional organizations?
I remember re-watching “three days of the condor” recently - and apart from a few “wow the 70s was a different time” moments the biggest takeaway was the hero just hands a dossier to the Washington Post, no <i>drops off a dossier to the post room!</i>, and the film, the audience, everyone just assumes the job is done - the bad guys are exposed and they will be punished<p>I think we have a different view now. In the UK we are looking at a Post Office scandal where the upper management literally prosecuted its own employees for theft instead of admit a billion dollar computer system was buggy. And this started in 1990s, was printed in newspapers by the mid-2000s and only got serious last year and prosecutions will probably go through to the 2030s<p>I mean if the punishment for your misdeeds is thirty years delayed, and basically consists of retiring and being embarrassed in front of friends it’s hardly a punishment.<p>And it rather makes this “moles” efforts … well it’s not much of a deal for him is it really.
Good read. For a similar story I can recommend: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mole:_Undercover_in_North_Korea" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mole:_Undercover_in_North_...</a>
> He moved to Las Vegas and, at the age of 25, became an officer in the metro police. Kinch came to serve in elite detective units over 23 years in the force, hunting fugitives and helping take down gangs like the Playboy Bloods. Eventually he was assigned to what he called the “Black squad,” according to court records, tasked with investigating violent crimes where the suspect was African American. (A Las Vegas police spokesperson told me they stopped “dividing squads by a suspect’s race” a year before Kinch retired.)<p>That is crazy, you'd think that would be illegal under the Civil Rights Act. White criminals had a separate police force from black ones.
What does it even mean "militia" in the US? Is any group with weapons a militia? Is it a militia to gather and train and only worry about tyranny?
This first paragraph really made me LOL.
This here:
and thumb drives that each held more than 100 gigabytes of encrypted documents, which he would quickly distribute if he were about to be arrested or killed.<p>he wouldn't be distributing crap if either of those happened. The cops or killers would be in possession!
I mean was he going to say to the cops WAIT don't arrest me and hands stuff to bystander01!!!
I can't take this article serious at all.
Reminds me of a story in Germany:<p>Verfassungsschutz moles have procured weapons for Nazi terrorists(1999-2011).<p><a href="https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalsozialistischer_Untergrund" rel="nofollow">https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalsozialistischer_Unterg...</a>
> Unless otherwise noted, none of the militia members mentioned in this story responded to requests for comment<p>This is a serious story but this made me burst out laughing. Sorry, the PR agent for these heavily armed militias was unable to return my request for comments.
The moles are leading the militias, what are you talking about - 'infiltrated'? Enirque Tarrio was an FBI informant the entire time before he was arrested.
After years of research, our mole discovered that "militia" members liked to dress in plus-sized camo and shoot legally-owned ARs on private property...
The amount of supposed criminal activity by "militias" pales in comparison to the massive transnational mexican cartels - who have their own militias, whose ideology is money.<p>But manufacturing a right wing conspiracy is more important than discussing real narco terrorism that kills thousands of Americans and Mexicans every year, floods our country with lethal drugs, and finances North Korea and Chinese crime organizations.<p>How many headless corpses did the Oath keepers leave on the street last year?<p>How many metric tons of fentanyl did they smuggle?<p>Yep.
Just discovered the existence of large scale armed political extremist groups in the States. Wow. And both left and right wing with any kind of mix of ideologies, too. I wonder how many of them are able to use a computer to find the myriad holes in the world's infrastructure.<p>Here is a really nice book to give some perspective:
End times, by Peter Turchin
Best most terrifying birthday present I ever got, I think.<p>Actually I think I'll put it as a post in and of itself, folks here may like it.
Frustrating article. They didn't discuss the goals of the militia's or their concerns at all. The spy was basically a one man militia.<p>Whole thing smells.