In the UK, there was an informant for MI5 in the IRA for years codenamed Steaknife. It turned out he was the head of IRA internal security, it was his job to hunt moles. He was the perfect agent. I seem to remember a story of a mafia don who turned out to be an informant, which seems wild to me.
These days it looks to me like Extinction Rebellion (XR) are being run by spies, since all their activities are so counter-productive in terms of making people hate environmentalism.
XR seem to be trying to distance themselves, but it's too late, I don't think most people distinguish between them.
Anything to antagonize working class people.
slip the feds a little juice tidbit here or there and he gets to run his empire a few months longer. repeat over and over until the feds get smart.
I mean, it's not as though other mafiosi turn informant because they yearn for justice...
At the same time you also tend to be a higher value target for external actors compared to young, new, members of an organisation. So in the young end of it you'd prefer infiltration to recruiting informants, in part because young informants also tend to be less reliable than old, for the reasons above. If it's your agent loyalty isn't as brittle as when you've convinced someone to become a traitor.
When news of government or other external actors having gained access breaks, you typically don't want your infiltrators to become known if you can avoid it. It's different in some settings, antifascists commonly do the opposite and try to protect their informants so they can keep working if they move on to another far right group, while their infiltrators sometimes go public with what they've done.
There's also "Jimmy the Weasel" Fratianno who turned FBI informant. In Ovid Demaris' book "The Last Mafioso: The Treacherous World of Jimmy Fratianno", he quotes Jimmy even laughs about being one, taking money from FBI and still running his rackets for a time.
And you're missing a key feedback loop. The feds typically "create" an informant by digging up dirt on someone and blackmailing them into ratting on their buddies in exchange for non-prosecution. This informant then has a huge f-ing reason to radicalize the group and see to it that they do or attempt to do something worthy of prosecution so that they can make good on their promise to the feds.
So otherwise potentially benign groups wind up getting turned into hotbeds of extremism basically because the feds demand extremists to prosecute.
This is a workflow that dates back at least as far as the war on drugs where you'd have small time traffickers would get turned into informants and then work tirelessly to push their boss's or suppliers business to the next level while collecting evidince for their handlers. It was used on racist and religious extremist groups in the 80s and 90s and then on muslim religious groups in the 00s and now you're seeing it again with right wing groups.
That's fascinating. I read about McVeigh years ago and knew he was motivated by Waco but I had no idea he actually witnessed it. Here is a short two minute video I found on the topic: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/oklahom...
I think the outcry is actually mostly media-oriented, because the media for the last generation has been filled with ex-Agents and funded by the Fed. The media is sad to see these organizations attacked, because the media is run by people with emotional bonds to those agencies.
Good riddance to all of them!
It seems entirely consistent that the people most alarmed about law enforcement and intelligence being handed over figures who are indicating they don’t intend to use it in a principled manner are critics who’ve seen how even less extreme more accountable people have used these roles poorly. The new team seems headed in a direction that might make poor past iterations look principled.
“Burn it all down” is good cover for people who want to selectively burn things down for their benefit (but not their things).
That would make sense if... there had been accountability in the past for the law enforcement and intel folks who abused their power. So far there's been no accountability ever for any of them no matter what they've done. If that continues and the only change is the targets then that will be very bad indeed, but that's not what Trump and friends are saying, and they seem to want to reduce the size of the agencies in question, which will necessarily reduce the number of targets they can acquire, or the extent to which they can persecute them -- unless of course AI makes them much more efficient in the future, say. Not that there's any guarantee that these agencies will ultimately be reduced in size. But if I take what they're saying at face value and they deliver on it, then I think we're looking at an overall improvement.
The attacks are premised on them being too leftist and needing to be replaced in their function by new/rebuilt organizations that are more friendly to the Right, which is the source of the center to center-left opposition to them (the Left itself is more focussed on criticizing the tactics of the center-to-center-left opposition than the regime.)
I have been saying it for over a decade, the western world is having a crisis of principals, not a crisis of policy. The inability to implement good policy (both public and private) is a symptom.
If they are trying to close in on the intelligence and police state because it's not vicious enough against folks they don't like (which includes me and a lot of folks I care about) then a "new and improved" CIA / FBI isn't a "good" thing.
I generally hate the US gov for it's history of doing objectively evil things (I pass by a former "residential school" every time I drive into town), but replacing it with something even more vicious and authoritarian doesn't improve the situation.
By contrast it's not surprising to me that as we go the other direction, the far right is less able to understand that these situations are structurally necessary for the operation of the systems that they support. Convincing those folks that it's not simply who is in charge is likely impossible. It will sound stupid, perhaps, but I have heard convincing arguments that the idea that systems are defined by "who is in charge of them" is fundamentally why "antisemitism" ends up being central to both the conspiracy folks and the fascists.
I never implied that they were.
> a federal agency [...] influences them into becoming informants. It's quite common for the FBI to frame this as "helping to keep people safe"; leaders in groups like this are frequently easy to manipulate with flattery.
> And you're missing a key feedback loop. The feds typically "create" an informant by digging up dirt on someone and blackmailing them into ratting on their buddies in exchange for non-prosecution.
I missed no such thing. Did you even read my comment?
> compromised after a federal agency threatens the leadership with jail time
[0]https://www.npr.org/2011/08/21/139836377/the-surge-in-fbi-in...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretchen_Whitmer_kidnapping_pl...
It's something most grass roots activists don't feel intuitively at all.
They look for spies among their own level but it's almost always going to be the organisers, the helpers, the ones with the van, the one that can print your posters, the one with a bit of spare cash, the dude who can set up your server and the friendly friend with time to help you personally that are the spies.
Logically it makes sense for a spy to be placed as high as possible to get more information, and yet activists look for spies among the rank and file. They look for odd people to label as the spy. They expel the outsider. They suspect the ones that don't fit in. But the spy is going to be a well adjusted normal insider that they already trust, almost always!
I find it so interesting. It happens again and again. It's probably the same pattern for any group that attracts any government attention.
It really feels counterintuitive that someone who has got to the top would be the one to turn, but it also makes sense that they would be the one's targetted.
People attracted to this stuff tend to be fairly dysfunctional as well. Even in successful revolutionary movements, the early people always get purged.
Because, at that point, the government has exactly one play left... to make everyone so afraid of compromise-proofing that no one bothers. This isn't unprecedented, by the way. Silk Road and Dread Pirate Roberts was a similar situation, and they used illegal NSA surveillance to unmask him and parallel construction (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction) to prosecute.
When they have a monopoly on violence and trillion dollar budgets, you're going to lose even if you have superior tactics.
This is not a new thing.
These people are typically the true believers in the Republic. They also believe they are taking down existential threats to the republic. Finally, they believe in defense in layers.
You know what they don't believe in? Playing fair.
No. I wouldn't count on new homeland security leadership appointees having a "free hand" in practice. All of them will discover that their phone, internet and location activity is known to the security agencies. All of that information is also known for their associates. Couple that with the fact that you're dealing with new appointees whose ideology is essentially based more in superiority rather than patriotism, and it points to a lot in that data trove that would be of interest to the kind of people who keep the FBI running from the shadows.
In fact, my bet is that this series of appointees will be far more easily controlled than ones appointed by some red, white and blue boy scout with a martyr complex like McCain would have been for instance. I'd wager there are probably some people in our homeland security infrastructure who actually prefer our appointed leadership be comprised of people who are more malleable.
And, to call Azov an extremist group, or to liken them to people who literally tried to overthrow the US government, or to ISIS, that is plain disturbed.
We don't know if this was from a non-Russian source.
Really? "Extremist brigade" then? Their isnignia is the one of 2.nd SS division Deutschland, cleverly mirrored. They were on the US sanction list.
I might be wrong, there might be things I've not heard of. If that's the case, inform me. What I do know is that they're a notoriously effective brigade in the Ukrainian military and that any argument about their focus not being on the defence of Ukraine's statehood would be very hard to make. I also know that their checkered past has been a goto subject for Russian propaganda campaigns, aiming to divide the West.
I'm not more of a supporter of this brigade, than anyone else fighting for Ukraine. I am from the Baltics. For us, Russia is an existential and immediate threat. When the new US administration reneged on support for Ukraine and, by extension, us, literally every woman that's close to me said she's worried about war. You probably don't know what that's like. Our anxiety for the future is palpable. That motivates me to speak up.
> It's not my job to educate you.
This is a common tactic of both the left and the right when they are faced with evidence that goes contrary to a (typically pretty tenuous) claim they're making. "Well I've given you a single source that exactly fits my worldview so now if you disagree you're simply uneducated, not disagreeing on the merits. It's impossible that the source I gave is absolute garbage."
It is your job to educate people when you're making a claim that goes against common sense. As far as I am aware there was absolutely no "crackdown" on Trump supporters in any organized fashion ever between his first election and when I woke up this morning. You're free to think otherwise, you might even be right, but if you want people to agree with you you better be prepared to convince them. And I could be wrong but I don't think calling them "fucking retards" is going to do it.
Based on first hand experience on the fringes of white supremacist organizations over the decades I'm totally unsurprised to hear law enforcement would have a hard time finding them in bulk as the percentage of people in the US who willingly harbor these kinds of views is a rounding error compared to the larger populace. It's actually pretty shocking how much trouble such a small group of people can cause on the rare occasion that they either muster the courage of their convictions and act on their beliefs or are goaded into action by law enforcement plants. In any case, trivializing these groups, either by dismissing their numbers or by trying to reframe them as mere "political opposition" is deeply stupid. These people are profoundly dangerous.
What's really wild here is I honestly have no idea what you're angry about, and I am deeply curious as to the cause.
When you find yourself aggressively defending scumbags, it's probably time for a good thorough reflection on your worldview.
The US has never had any qualms cooperating with more or less nasty groups or regimes. They recruited the mafia to keep unions and socialists from gaining political power in Europe, exchanging a revival of the heroin trade for their own political gains.
they may not have had that bias before, but I'd bet in 6 months, when stocked full of MAGA new-hires, it's a different story.
Here's "God, Family, and Guns", on YouTube.[1] This week, "What gun would Jesus carry?" (Answer: a 1911, the classic Army .45 automatic from 1911.)
Besides, Trump doesn't need an SA.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxFgFKxa3SD1WIZWmBRGEhg
For that matter, I'd include myself in the latter group. I'm reasonably vocal here - usually in an attempt to simply share my perspective, as it's not of the prevailing position in this community.
Sure, "the gun nuts" have a different agenda than the larger community. We're gun nuts because that's important to us. I can't think of anything that I've ever said (or seen said) in that community that should be secret. Lots of things that could be easily taken out of context, sure, and a fair number of things that are just plain inappropriate - but you could say the same for any community.
> You worry about the ones who organize quietly.
Some of them, absolutely.
> Here's "God, Family, and Guns", on YouTube.[1] This week, "What gun would Jesus carry?" (Answer: a 1911, the classic Army .45 automatic from 1911.)
I've never heard of that channel - though, granted, I'm not really a YouTube kinda person. It looks like what I'd call "Boomer content". I don't mean that in a negative way exactly; that's the kind of thing I'd expect someone in the gun community in their mid-50s or older to watch. The younger generation (say, 20s-40s) is watching things like "The Fat Electrician".
Particularly on youtube there's this huge Forgotten Weapons, Garand Thumb, DemolitionRanch etc style sphere that stays relatively apolitical, or at least just mildly right wingy.
I'm not blaming hobbyists for gun violence or anything, obviously, but these ideas are not unconnected.
about 2/3 of gun deaths in 2022 are suicides. Of homicides, it's mostly young black men. Suicide rates are highest for old white men.
https://publichealth.jhu.edu/sites/default/files/2024-09/202...
We are failing specific people at specific stages of their lives by not offering them opportunity and hope for the future, resulting in gun violence and suicide. Even if you could round up all the guns, the hopelessness and violence will remain without some structural changes.
If you're a US citizen, gun control is an infringement on your civil rights and a weak topical solution for systematic flaws.
As a parent, and as a gun owner, I'm fine with there being gun control that leads to no more school shootings. And no, you can't depend on a "good guy with a gun" (Uvalde, Parkland). I don't know what the solution is, to be honest, but other countries don't have the school shooting problem the US has.
The best thing we can do is to address the root cause, and react as quickly as possible when there is a problem. We have police presence at basically every single public arena -- government buildings, hospitals, stadiums, malls, etc; we should have police presence at schools too, along with the training to do their jobs effectively.
The harsh reality is that school shootings make up a vanishingly small number of students who will die of gun violence, let along those that die from any cause.
[The FBI says 105 people](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/05/what-the-...), excluding shooters, died in mass shootings in 2023, of which a subset will be students. Even if we assumed every mass shooting victim in 2023 was a student, something like 10x the number of students will die from poisoning, another 10x from suffocation, another 22x from motor vehicle collisions, etc.
I think this is a uniquely American problem because America is a unique country. No other nations have the incredible wealth, diversity, and rights of America, and looking to other countries to emulate is imo, a mistake.
However:
> I think this is a uniquely American problem because America is a unique country. No other nations have the incredible wealth, diversity, and rights of America, and looking to other countries to emulate is imo, a mistake.
- increased wealth should be correlated with a reduction in shootings,
- population diversity is not a unique feature of the USA, it is comparable, or arguably lower, than most European countries,
- same for rights: the rights of a USA citizen are comparable to the average EU citizen. Many EU countries allow the possession of guns (although most forbid taking arms out of one's home unless it's for transport, e.g., to the firing range, and most EU states vehemently forbid concealed carry). There are some differences regarding Free Speech, however, where most EU countries allow it largely, but restrict hate speech more.
It's true that shootings are a somewhat unique USA problem, but I'd look more into cultural differences than into rights and demographics.
Outside the US, it is.[1]
[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/school-sh...
Other than the "right to bear arms", what rights do Americans have that sets them apart?
I literally said "I'm not blaming gun hobbyists for violence." Thank you for starting off with a terribly bad faith reading of my comment.
> If you're a US citizen, gun control is an infringement on your civil rights
And this is what I mean by them being connected. Gun hobbyists in the US will argue for it based on their "rights", which just makes it harder to make any changes that might actually reduce gun violence.
> Even if you could round up all the guns, the ... violence will remain without some structural changes.
It's difficult for me to believe that if you remove one of the easiest ways to kill people, violence would just remain the same. Is there any evidence to support this theory? I've never seen any, but I have seen data suggesting that countries with stricter gun control laws tend to have less murders.
> gun control is an infringement on your civil rights
Because gun ownership is part of your constitution, you can easily make it seem as though those questioning it are attacking the very basis of your country. Seems like a systemic issue to me...
> the hopelessness ... will remain without some structural changes.
I don't disagree that hopelessness is the core issue here, but I think it's blatantly silly to think that if you give a hopeless population easy access to tools whose entire function is to kill, and tell them that owning that weapon (and using it when necessary...) is a fundamental part of their identity... that it won't result in more and more intense violence.
Like with many widespread societal issues, you can't just ignore the symptoms and try to cure the actual problem - and certainly nor can you do the opposite, as you say - you need to fix both.
I agree with you, this is not the problem. No bad faith intended.
> Gun hobbyists in the US will argue for it based on their "rights"..."
No quotes on rights. If you don't care about rights or are happy to cede them, then there are all kinds of societal improvements you could make -- say, banning hate speech, lowering or eliminating a presumption of innocence, banning private firearm ownership, etc. However, this is antithetical to how the US is setup and its system of laws. The same arguments used to attack gun control can just as easily be turned on other rights, such as the freedom of speech.
> It's difficult for me to believe that if you remove one of the easiest ways to kill people, violence would just remain the same
It's difficult to run a proper experiment for many reasons. However, I would argue that the concern from voters is not about routine violence (eg gang violence localized to a specific community) but mass killings like Uvalde or Parkland. As we can see in Europe (or even in the US, in New Orleans), you can kill plenty of people with a car, a bomb, a knife, etc. Killing lots of people quickly is not an attribute unique to firearms.
> Because gun ownership is part of your constitution, you can easily make it seem as though those questioning it are attacking the very basis of your country. Seems like a systemic issue to me...
Yes, this is a systematic attack and many Americans see it this way. Governments have only ever moved one direction on gun control -- once the right is eroded, it is gone forever.
> blatantly silly to think that if you give a hopeless population easy access to tools whose entire function is to kill...
Again, the second amendment for everyone. We do not gate rights behind fees, tests, or onerous restrictions. I am interested in preserving (and expanding!) civil liberties for all, while addressing the root causes of gun violence.
I grew up supporting gun control, but I think that’s because of my background. I grew up trusting the police, not only to protect me from any would-be ne'er-do-wells, but also that I wouldn’t be antagonized by the state.
If you live in a rural area, where the response time for the local sheriff is half an hour, then having a gun can be vital. Or if you live in an area where the cops simply won’t show up when called.
I don’t want to have to fully rely on the state for my personal safety, and in particular this current government.
Ah yes, paint the issue as only solvable by a "magic" item... Of course, trying to make the other side seem fundamentally silly is a primary tactic of the pro-gun crowd
> only be used to defend yourself, and not for offensive purposes, then sure!
Of course not, but the question is more the damage one can do when used for offensive purposes.
Anyway, here's your magic solutions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Less_lethal_weapon
I don't think "the other side" is fundamentally silly--that's just the way I write. I take "the other side" extremely seriously because, like I mentioned, I've been to pro gun control protests, and while I now disagree with some of those positions, I have genuine respect for where you're coming from.
In terms of less-lethal weapons, anyone who's serious about self defense should carry pepper spray (though pepper spray is non-lethal, rather than less-lethal). Full stop. If you want to carry a gun, too, that makes sense in some situations. But for myself and anyone who's serious about self-defense, we first of all hope to never have to use any of these tools ever. But if something did happen, I'd much much much rather use pepper spray than something that's more harmful.
The problem with _only_ having pepper spray is that it has limited efficacy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItJAeJz43ts is a trans youtuber who posts a lot of gun content who is talking here about pepper spray. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWUq-OEYpiI is Massad Ayoob talking about the efficacy of pepper spray.
Society believes it can stomach that cost because it is largely irrational, incapable of long-term or worst-case thinking, and utterly oblivious to ground-state reality.
I always feel the need to preface this statement when I make it here, so here we go: this is in no way meant as a threat or even a statement of my own political beliefs. It is my belief based on being a member of these communities for decades.
Any attempt to ban firearms in the United States would result in more death and injury than the problems it is intended to solve. The American people will not give up their arms without bloodshed.
Worse than the logic of your argument, is the morality of it. If trained soldiers are oppressing people, then not only is it rational to retain the means to fight back against them, but it's a moral imperative. Stupidity might be forgiven, you can't will yourself to be smarter than you were born. Moral cowardice is a choice, a disgusting one.
This is a very generous assumption. I instead assume that the problem that it intends to solve is "how does a government crank down hard on its citizens so that they become some sort of Stalinesque serfs who have no power and those which survive mindlessly obey"... in that scenario, gun prohibition isn't just a good idea but probably a necessary precondition.
For obvious reasons, even if gun control advocates are privy to that reasoning, public relations demands that they not say that part out loud.
That's the community I'm speaking of - in fact, we'd call those people "Fudds", after Elmer Fudd.
It's definitely a political position. It's just one that's prone to violence. If anything, it's the opposite; the gun community does an excellent job of policing itself. I've personally seen people displaying violent tendencies get reported and ultimately charged and convicted within that particular community.
I don't carry them much, for all the reasons you might imagine: they're big, heavy, and relatively low capacity. They feel great, though.
Realistically I almost always carry a Glock 43. If I were buying a carry pistol today, I'd consider a Sig P365 or a Canik. They're the right balance of capability and convenience.
... but yeah, that particular conclusion was foregone. If nothing else, it feeds the long-running meme of .45 ACP being "God's caliber".
What kind of ridiculous copium is this?
i'm sure the quilting community says all sorts of terrible things that could be taken out of context.
the difference is they don't have a long history of gun violence. ain't no one showed up and killed 20 elementary kids with knitting needles. no one smuggled a crochet gear to a 17 year old and saw protesters crochet'd to death.
and what is your 2nd amendment right doing now? the government, and arguably global economy, is under threat and you're doing what exactly with these guns?
What else would you have me do with my guns? (I’m also helping my non-trans friends get into shooting too.)
What do you suggest is done with the guns about that? You want us to kill over disagreement on economic policy?
It is also hypocritical for civilian gun owners to claim they will use their 2A rights to protect themselves and other citizens from authoritarian government but fail to be vigilant enough to recognize the rise of authoritarianism.
This only works if the people that have guns are smart enough to know when to use them con(de?)structively. Unfortunately there are swathes of American gun owners that view politics like a football game that will never have any effect on them, and once it arrives on their doorstep it will be far, far too late.
I wouldn't say hypocritical. I'd say cognitively dissonant. Not the same thing.
> It is also hypocritical for civilian gun owners to claim they will use their 2A rights to protect themselves and other citizens from authoritarian government but fail to be vigilant enough to recognize the rise of authoritarianism.
Private firearms ownership is an indirect and implicit threat of violence against tyranny. It may or may not work as such. It might only limit the degree of tyranny. Remember, armed citizens can't organize to commit violence against the state because the state has authority (or a patina of authority) and the ability to bring a great deal of force to bear on any hot spots. The state's ability to bring force to bear is limited though, but only in such a way that a huge number of citizens would have to rise up simultaneously and be patient enough to keep rising as the going gets tough. Therefore I think private firearms ownership can't stop tyranny altogether, but can moderate it. There is no hypocrisy or cognitive dissonance here.
Plainly false. Though people who advocate gun control never pay attention, there have been many high-profile mass murders/attacks where people did attack with knives/swords/machetes, and these have comparable body counts.
The UK is way ahead of you too, by the way. They've started to implement knife control, including orders for people to bring in kitchen knives to have the tips blunted.
>and what is your 2nd amendment right doing now? the government, and arguably global economy, is under threat a
And that government is perceived to be on the side of the gun rights proponents. The people complaining are largely those who have, in the past, eschewed gun ownership.
Can you link me to one of these? I googled and couldn't find anything, but am genuinely curious.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20180528202625/https://www.indep...
It is a good idea to stand on pro-gun rhetoric when you want all the guns on your side and not being pointed at you. You use confusing double-talk to trick them into believing you are on their side and you fight for them. In the US, there is the added benefit of poor education, which cripples critical thinking.
Also, the claim that melee weapons are somehow comparable to modern firearms is quite laughable. Where are you getting your data?
People laugh at all sorts of things that aren't very funny.
The body counts for most of the school shootings (and other, various, non-school shootings) that people complain about are just under double digits, or manage to roll right up into double digits. Blade attacks are perfectly capable of that many injuries and deaths within the time constraint of a typical police response. This is born by fact, where such knife attacks have managed those body counts. There are a half a dozen or more in recent years in China, and at least one in Europe that I can think of.
>You use confusing double-talk to trick them into believing you are on their side and you fight for them.
No one with any sense here thinks I "fight for them". I'm just showing that I'm not unwilling for them to exercise their own rights to self-defense. This is because a principle is at stake. If it also contrasts with the general lack of principles among those who advocate gun control somehow, that's their problem.
It sounds like you're either advocating or wishing that gun owners "do something", something presumably violent. And that in a post ascribing desire for violence to [from context] militias and gun nuts. A bit strange, IMO.
> i'm sure the quilting community says all sorts of terrible things that could be taken out of context.
The things said there are different in perspective from some of the things said here, just from another direction.
To be more specific, most of the time when I see someone say something like "hang 'em from the lampposts", it's in reference to LEO attempting confiscation or something. It should not be reasonably construed as a legitimate threat and is not intended as such. It's hyperbole.
People who are actually a risk are obvious based on their overall pattern of behavior.
> the difference is they don't have a long history of gun violence. ain't no one showed up and killed 20 elementary kids with knitting needles. no one smuggled a crochet gear to a 17 year old and saw protesters crochet'd to death.
Neither does the gun community.
We do have dangerous items as the center of the whole idea, though, which means the hyperbole I mentioned above is looked at much more closely than if a textile artist made the same comment. That has resulted in significant internal policing.
> and what is your 2nd amendment right doing now? the government, and arguably global economy, is under threat and you're doing what exactly with these guns?
The vast majority of us don't see things that way at all - this is exactly what "we" (i.e., the gun community) voted for.
That said, I've been an advocate for LGBT, minorities, and others at risk acquiring arms and training for decades. I'll continue to do that.
Feed it to a local model?
If so: Wikileaks made/makes(?) all of their stuff easily browseable, "her emails" included.
I'd think by day would be next. Browse subjects by day, and word clouds for each message thread? The. Try to isolate topics discussed each day, then link the topics across days.
You should be able to click in and see the thread/messages/etc.
This is, at some level, how legal discovery stuff works from what I understand.
It seems you want a AI to analyze the data in general?
Otherwise you will have to do some work and read a little bit .. and then investigate to see if there is more. That is where the search tools are useful. Like in the example, finding out if that Scott guy changed his opinion on the 6. of january after Trump became president. (To see if the original statement was a lie. Not possible with ease so far)
People will speak in code, if they are planning crimes. Only some idiots speak openly of violent revolution in public messengers.
Data dredgers will love you because now we don’t have to use Beautiful Soup to reconstruct it
So it's most likely just going to be an insight into a different culture/worldview, like reading e.g. /r/anarchism. In many ways this is also the same with the Clinton leaks. Unless one was just horrifically naive of how politics works, there was nothing particularly exceptional in it. The really wild stuff came from interpreting messages as having coded meanings.
(note: arrests, because whether the chats were recorded legally and are admissable to court is a whole different matter)
Read back a few sentences for the context - they aren't willing to ready 77 pages just to seek/isolate messages from one individual around a specific topic. I would expect a journalist to do this repeatedly for multiple individuals, so it makes sense to parse the data and make it queryable without having to read through hundreds/thousands of telegrams just to capture a few dozen
Not exactly hard-hitting journalism. He then goes on to speculate that Scot Seddon's disavowal of the January 6th protests was disingenuous, and that his true feelings would be revealed in chat logs after Trump was re-elected. But:
> This is much more readable – but still, I don't think I can bring myself to sit down and read 77 pages of these messages right now. And that's just this one export of this one Telegram channel.
So the guy complaining about conspiracy theories goes on to invent his own despite having access to potentially corroborative data that he simply can't be bothered to read.
Yes it's politically sensitive, but it's going to be difficult to find motivating examples in this dataset that aren't.
> Also, at a glance at least, it appears that the bulk of it is idle chatter and conspiracy nonsense, presumably with evidence of crimes sprinkled in here or there. [...]
> Ahh, so he's the founder of American Patriot Three Percent, and here's his statement disavowing the violence from January 6, 2021. Looking at the metadata of this PDF, it was created on January 16, 2021. I wonder what Scot thinks about January 6 these days, after Trump was re-elected in 2024.
> In all likelihood, I can find out exactly what he thinks, because he probably posted about it to his militia buddies in Telegram, and it's probably in this dataset. The problem is, there's no easy way to quickly filter out messages from him, or even to tell which of these exported Telegram channels he was part of. I think that will be the first problem I solve.
While he doesn't come out and explicitly state: "Scot is lying about disavowing violence," I do think it's fairly obvious that this is what he's implying, given everything else he wrote.
So yeah, it does come off as biased, but maybe that's how journalism is done nowadays.
I read it as implying, go check for yourself!
But nonetheless fascinating. There are must be some really good PhD thesii written (to be written?) about how someone is supposed to handle this sort of data dump with modern tooling. It is a non-trivial general problem; we have a lot of really data floating around in public (Panama papers, relatively transparent government info, dumps of less transparent info at wikileaks.org, OSINT of all shapes and sizes). Even if a body reads the whole thing they need some sort of solid mental schema going in or they'll end up in crank territory.
Although why he thinks old mate would change his position on the Jan 6 riots is a mystery (and why he cares). Taking a stand against riots is one of those easy-win political options that costs nothing and almost everyone agrees with. Riots are fundamentally ineffective; I doubt anyone serious wants to be associated with rioters. I suppose stranger things happen.
> It's come to my attention that this dataset is rather challenging for journalists and researchers to wrap their heads around. I wrote a book, Hacks, Leaks, and Revelations, aimed at teaching journalists and researchers how to analyze datasets just like this.
In full fairness "riots" is what its called when the rioters lose. If they win they are usually called something more positive and celebrated by the resulting new regime.
bullshit. the only reason you have an 8 hour work day and a semblance of worker protections is because a lot of people fought and died for them.
it's the only reason 8 year olds don't go down into the mines, or lose hands working in factories.
Jan 6th made a serious run at congressional officials; the VP of the US basically had to hide or get lynched. this could have been a thing, but didn't go all the way.
77 pages isn't that much in the scheme of thing. A court case having 77 pages of evidence would be entirely normal.
I'd be curious if the LLM's own self-censorship would prevent it from reporting truly disturbing things. Maybe add one legitimately bad thing into the middle of a chat and see if it gets reported.
I have the feeling that would probably be more effective, not sure though.
> ...
> At the end, I'll have a single database of Telegram messages from the whole dataset. I'll be able to query it to, for example, show me all messages from Scot Seddon sorted chronologically. This will make it simple to see what he was saying in the lead-up to January 6, immediately after January 6, and then what he's saying about Trump these days, after he was re-elected.
There are more parts to come in this series, which is very clearly stated in the post.
Even if he's right (and I'm not saying he isn't), this kind of behavior is inexcusable (though completely expected) coming from a guy who calls himself a journalist.
DDoSecrets appears to be an anarchist/communist affiliated activist group.
Basically you've got two groups from extreme sides of the political spectrum fighting each other, the Guy Fawkes LARPers upset about Jan 6 of all things, and the seal team 6 LARPers upset about "stolen" elections and ivermectin.
> Over 200 gigabytes of chat logs and recordings from paramilitary groups and militias including American Patriots Three Percent (APIII) and the Oath Keepers
So no, neither of those groups are anti-fascists (seemingly the opposite actually) or "far-left", and the resulting documentation is only from the groups the individual successfully infiltrated.
Besides, how many bigger groups of militarized anti-fascist groups exists today in the US? I'm not from there, so don't know the situation, but from the outside it seems like mostly people on the right are the ones running the militias over there.
They tend to run largely independent scenes from city to city. You'll usually have anywhere from one to a dozen people acting as the core organizers of a given group. The groups range in size from around a dozen people to upwards of four hundred, depending on the city. Some cities might also have multiple groups active at a given time. I don't know what the scenes look like now but around 2018 I can remember at least two independent groups operating out of Portland, for example. These groups are usually no more than a phone tree of people they can mobilize for protests. Organizers may also be in contact with scenes from other cities; it's not uncommon for demonstrators to be bussed in to a protest from another city or state. It's quite rare for these groups to be truly "militarized." They often form violent mobs, but they rarely have any hierarchical structure beyond "leadership" (the organizers) and they don't generally make use of firearms. This has been changing in recent years; there have been a number of high-profile shootings involving Antifa-affiliated shooters.
Quite a long answer overall that boils down to "No, they don't exist" :)
Would make sense if our friends in the US would also arm themselves, similar to militias on the right, but I wonder why that isn't the case? Even the non-extremists seems to have (to me) extremist opinions about guns, so I guess I'm kind of surprised only the far-right side got militarized compared to the left. I guess it gets a lot easier when you have more friends in the right (no pun intended) places.
It's not that simple. Leftists will discount what these groups did in 2020 but you're talking about a few dozen deaths and hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage. These groups are not "militias" in the way anyone would understand the term (namely, as an organized group training with firearms), but they are capable of terrorism at a tremendous scale. The difference is that their shootings tend to be spur of the moment (I can think of only one or two notable exceptions in the last ten years), whereas most right wing terrorism consists of spree killings conducted by a single killer.
> Even the non-extremists seems to have (to me) extremist opinions about guns, so I guess I'm kind of surprised only the far-right side got militarized compared to the left.
Gun culture in America is highly bifurcated. Urban whites in the areas that Antifa is most prevalent rarely own firearms. This has been changing as some of them are authentically worried that Trump is coming to put them in death camps, but most of the people involved in these groups are (to be frank) neurotic and lack both the desire and the temperament to operate firearms, so the trend doesn't really seem to have caught on. Historically, American leftists had no such aversion to firearms and were strongly in favor of the second amendment. These days, political tribalism in America is so extreme that you end up with really weird scenarios like people who are ostensibly anarchists making fun of libertarians for owning guns.
I know you seemingly don't want it to appear that simple, but it really is. Original question was regarding organized and armed anti-fascist/far-left movements and if there was any investigation into those. Since we aren't organized, hierarchical (by design) nor armed/militarized, like the far-right, investigations into those are harder and AFAIK, haven't happened as of today.
If you have some concrete evidence for those investigations existing and being published on the open internet, feel free to link those.
Otherwise this conversation kind of lost track of it's original topic, as you're somehow dragging into "urban white rarely owning firearms" which might be true or not, but not sure how it's related to the topic at hand. Your language is also starting to become emotional and colorful enough for me (and others) to recognize that we're spilling into sharing anecdotal and personal experiences/beliefs, rather than talking hard concrete data and events.
And my reply was that the issue is not as simple as you are making it out to be. For example, since you have referred to these groups as "we," I could infer that you endorse the acts of terrorism linked to these groups. You would then probably say: "Wait, my it's not that simple, my position is more nuanced than that, despite agreeing with these people in principle I don't support all of their methods." If I replied: "I know you seemingly don't want it to appear to be that simple, but it really is. You support terrorism," you would rightly judge that I was being disingenuous.
> If you have some concrete evidence for those investigations existing and being published on the open internet, feel free to link those.
It's unlikely that there have been any such investigations since (like I said in my original post) these groups do not generally operate as militias. This does not indicate that these groups are not dangerous. You are trying to evade that issue by restricting the discussion to your original claim that "from the outside it seems like mostly people on the right are the ones running the militias over there" - which I never contested. When I said "It's not that simple," I was arguing that the idea that militias are an exclusively right-wing phenomenon (which is nearly true) would lead one to the erroneous conclusion that politically-motivated violence is also an exclusively right-wing phenomenon. This isn't the case; to which end:
1) On May 28, 2020, Oscar Lee Stewart Jr. is trapped and burns to death in a pawn shop set on fire in Minneapolis during the George Floyd riots. This was one of approximately two hundred such fires set during the course of these riots.
2) On May 29, 2020, Urooj Rahman and Colinford Mattis (both lawyers) used a molotov cocktail to set fire to a police car in New York. [0]
3) On June 29, 2020, 16-year-old Antonio Mays Jr. was shot to death by a member of Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) security. 14-year-old Robert West was left in critical condition. The boys had allegedly carjacked an SUV somewhere outside of the zone and had driven it into the area in an attempt to avoid attracting the attention of law enforcement. [1] Some have speculated that Mays was shot by a member of the John Brown Gun Club (an antifascist armed leftist group) [2], but so far as I know, his killer has never been arrested, nor identified.
4) On July 28, 2020, Gabriel Agard-Berryhill set fire to the Mark O. Hatfield courthouse in Portland, Oregon using "an incendiary device." [3]
5) On December 17, 2021, Ellen Brennan Reiche was convicted of placing shunts on railroad tracks in Washington state "in protest of a natural gas pipeline through Indigenous land in British Columbia." [4]
As I was reading about Antonio Mays again, I also came across a Kansas-area group with ties to the John Brown Gun Club, which I had not been aware of: "Redneck Revolt" [5]. Of particular interest from its core principles: "We believe in the right of militant resistance. We believe in the need for revolution."
> Your language is also starting to become emotional and colorful enough for me (and others) to recognize that we're spilling into sharing anecdotal and personal experiences/beliefs, rather than talking hard concrete data and events.
If you don't want people to respond this way to you, you shouldn't ask disingenuous questions and respond to good faith comments with adolescent tripe like: Quite a long answer overall that boils down to "No, it doesn't exist" :). This kind of low-effort quipping isn't acceptable here.
[0] - https://nypost.com/2022/11/18/molotov-cocktail-tossing-urooj...
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Occupied_Protest#...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puget_Sound_John_Brown_Gun_Clu...
[3] - https://www.justice.gov/usao-or/pr/portland-man-charged-july...
[4] - https://apnews.com/article/business-environment-and-nature-b...
What incident are you referring to where part of the US was occupied with automatic weapons? The closest thing I can think of is the Seattle CHOP/CHAZ/whatever the heck it's called. But AFAIK people there were only open carrying semi-automatic weapons, not fully automatic ones.