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<font size="1"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/14/armed-militias-conspiracy-theorists-anti-vaxxers-red-pill-expo">https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/14/armed-militias-conspiracy-theorists-anti-vaxxers-red-pill-expo</a></font>
<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">US militias forge alliances with conspiracy theorists ahead of election</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Ed Pilkington - October 14, 2020<br></div>
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<p>Armed militia groups are forging alliances in the final stages of the
US presidential election with conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers who
claim the coronavirus pandemic is a hoax, intensifying concerns that
trouble could be brewing ahead of election day.</p>
<p>Leading advocates of anti-government and anti-science propaganda came
together at the weekend, joined by the founder of one of the largest
militia groups. The rare connection occurred at the <a href="https://redpillexpo.org/">Red Pill Expo</a>, a conference convened on Jekyll Island, Georgia – a <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-story-behind-the-creature-from-jekyll-island-the-anti-fed-conspiracy-theory-bible">symbolic location</a> as it is the birthplace of the US Federal Reserve, a popular bogey figure for conspiracy theorists.</p>
<p>The summit, staged indoors in front of a packed and maskless audience
of about 350, was headlined by Stewart Rhodes, president of the Oath
Keepers. The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/09/us-militias-trump-election-day-covid-guns">militia</a>,
which turned up menacingly at several Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests
over the summer and has acted as a vigilante squad at numerous Donald
Trump campaign rallies, has links to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/right-wing-militias-civil-war/616473/">25,000</a> current or past members, mostly military or police veterans.</p>
<p>Rhodes aroused the crowd of “Red Pillers”, as they called themselves,
with incendiary language. He denounced BLM as a “communist front” and
encouraged attendees to seek training in firearms and militia activity
as the election approaches.</p>
<p>“You are your own self-defense,” he said. “You must organize
yourselves in the next 30 days in your towns and counties. We have
members in every state in the union and we are standing them up right
now.”</p>
<p>Rhodes said the turbulence around “radical left” protests had brought
“a flood of special warfare operatives into the Oath Keepers”. He cited
former navy Seals and special force personnel from Fort Bragg, the US
army garrison in North Carolina.</p>
<p>A number of groups monitoring far rightwing paramilitary activity have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/09/us-militias-trump-election-day-covid-guns">warned</a>
in recent weeks that militia groups and individuals online are
increasingly focusing their attentions on the presidential election. The
chatter has been fueled by Trump’s provocative remarks casting doubt on
the integrity of the voting process and calling on his supporters to
turn up at polling places on election day.</p>
<p>Anxiety is also growing around the activities of white supremacist domestic terrorist groups, which federal agencies now <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/2020_10_06_homeland-threat-assessment.pdf">recognize</a> as an especially dangerous <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-06-23/growing-white-supremacist-menace">threat</a>. Last week six people were charged in a plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer.</p>
<p>At the Red Pill gathering, the Oath Keeper president set his sights
openly on election day. He said that on 3 November “we will have our men
deployed outside the polling stations to make sure you are protected,
especially in swing states”.</p>
<p>Rhodes’ appearance marked an unusually overt fusion of interests
between armed far-right groups and anti-government and
anti-pharmaceutical conspiracy theorists. Several of his fellow keynote
speakers denounced the coronavirus pandemic as a fraud cooked up by
global elites as a ploy to subjugate the American people.</p>
<p>Betsy Quammen, author of a book on the 2014 Bundy standoff in Nevada
who attended the Red Pill event as a monitor, said the union of
disparate virulent movements was troubling. “As somebody who’s been
studying militia manoeuvring and conspiracy theorists, it’s
disconcerting to see these various groups uniting under a common banner
of mistrust about coronavirus.”</p>
<p>She added that the timing of the meeting so close to the election was alarming.</p>
<p>Among the speakers at the summit, Mikki Willis followed Rhodes in
talking up the actions of armed rightwing individuals. Willis is known
for having been the director of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/coronavirus-viral-video-plandemic-judy-mikovits-conspiracy-theories">Plandemic</a>, the viral video that spread the lie that coronavirus was invented by big drug companies and Bill Gates, among others.</p>
<p>He boasted to the Red Pill audience that he had also made a laudatory video about Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/27/kenosha-alleged-shooter-kyle-rittenhouse-charges">charged</a>
in August in the killing of two people during anti-police brutality
protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Willis praised the alleged shooter, whom
Trump also notably <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/31/trump-kyle-rittenhouse-press-briefing-kenosha">failed to denounce</a>, as a “very stand-up citizen”.</p>
<p>David Icke, the British conspiracy theorist widely denounced for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/feb/01/conspiracy-theorist-david-icke-should-be-banned-from-australia-minister-told">antisemitic hate speech</a>,
was beamed into the summit by video from the UK. He traded
misinformation about the “pandemic hoax”, accusing a global “cult” of
elites of having creating a coronavirus vaccine that was in fact a
“sterilization agent” that would be used to destroy humanity.</p>
<p>Icke also encouraged school kids to refuse to wear masks, which he called “face diapers”.</p>
<p>Two other major strains of misinformation were represented at the
weekend. Del Bigtree, producer of the anti-vaccination film Vaxxed,
which features the disgraced British doctor <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jul/18/how-disgraced-anti-vaxxer-andrew-wakefield-was-embraced-by-trumps-america">Andrew Wakefield</a>, also portrayed the pandemic as a global conspiracy aiming to take control over people’s lives.</p>
<p>Bigtree pointed to a <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/09/04/covid-19-two-thirds-us-wont-take-vaccine-right-away-poll-shows/5696982002/">poll</a>
last month that suggested that two-thirds of Americans would be
hesitant to get a Covid vaccine when it first became available. He said
the survey showed the anti-vaccination movement was winning: “Man, does
it feel good!”</p>
<p>He also praised Trump as a “brave individual” and someone “I’ve watched wear a mask less than anyone else”.</p>
<p>The last group given a voice at the gathering were peddlers of industrial bleach, who market the chemical as a “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/19/bleach-miracle-cure-amazon-covid">miracle cure</a>”
for all known ailments including malaria, HIV/Aids, cancer and
Covid-19. Kerri Rivera, a leading advocate of chlorine dioxide as a
treatment for autism, talked to the summit by video link from Germany.</p>
<p>“If people took chlorine dioxide for most illnesses, few doctors
would be needed and the pharmaceutical industry would be bankrupted,”
she said.</p>
<p>She also claimed the bleach, which is used in industrial textile
manufacturing, had no major side effects. In fact, the US Food and Drug
Administration has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/12/mark-grenon-archbishop-florida-church-selling-bleach-miracle-cure-arrested-son">warned</a> that consuming it can be life-threatening and incidents of death have been recorded.</p>
<p>Several leading bleach pushers in the US are currently in jail on federal charges.</p>
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