[Olympia, Wash.] – MTN – The City of Olympia Prosecutor’s Office has announced charges against two men in connection to the October 16, 2021, vandalization of the “Respect and Love Olympia” mural that fronted the former Griswold’s Building on 4th Avenue in downtown Olympia.
Colton Michael Brown, 23, of Ravensdale, and Spencer Simpson, 20, of Ellensburg, have been charged with a misdemeanor crime of Aiding and Abetting Graffiti. The pair are accused of defacing the rainbow mural and community statement against hate. Brown is the Pacific Northwest Network Director of Patriot Front, which has been recognized by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a white nationalist hate group. Simpson is also a member.
The Olympia Police Department has been investigating the crime and made use of community information and open-source social media and websites to help identify those involved in the vandalism. This led to the charges against the two men.
Patriot Front began in late 2017 as a splinter group of the violent fascist organization Vanguard America, which fractured after it was tied to Charlottesville car attack murderer James Alex Fields. Its 22-year-old leader, Thomas Rousseau, lives in the group’s current headquarters in Haslet, Texas, where he leads the Neo-Nazi organization.
The group Unicorn Riot released video, audio, and pictures in January 2022 after a data leak exposed 400GB of data about Patriot Front. The information suggests that Brown goes by the name “John WA” in his online presence and in communications to other Patriot Front members.
This isn’t the first brush with the law for the duo, who were among 31 members of the hate group arrested in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho on June 11, charged with conspiracy to riot, a misdemeanor. Prosecutors allege the group planned to force confrontations at a gay pride event in the lakeside Idaho panhandle community.
The plan was foiled when a person alerted police after they saw the group loading up into the back of a U-Haul truck like, “a little army,” according to local officials. Area police stopped the U-Haul truck within sight of the festival. During the search of the suspects and the box truck, police found smoke grenades, shields, batons, and other tactical gear.
Patriot Front members were active in Kirkland from 2018 to 2021. Social media users first started sharing images of flyers posted across the city in October 2018. In 2019, members tossed flyers in plastic baggies with a rock as added weight into residents’ driveways in the Highlands neighborhood. Stencils and stickers appeared sporadically through early 2021. No one was ever identified or charged in any of those incidents.
Photo Credit – Social Media User – Members of Patriot Front left flyers in Kirkland driveways in January 2019Photo Credit – Social Media User – October 2018 Patriot Front flyer attached to a light pole using the Nazi-era slogan, “blood and soil” on recruitment posters placed in Kirkland, Washington
“I appreciate the work of the investigators, and the community members who stepped forward to assist in the investigation,” said Olympia Police Chief Rich Allen. “Acts like these have no place in Olympia. We will always investigate these kinds of incidents, and we will always work to hold those responsible to account in a court of law.”
Brown and Simpson will be arraigned on their charges on July 13, 2022, at 8 a.m. in Olympia Municipal Court. The work of identifying others involved in the vandalism is ongoing. After Olympia, the pair are expected to be in court in Idaho on August 22, 2022, to face their conspiracy charges.
[SEATTLE, Wash.] – (MTN) After weeks of testimony, the jury considering the evidence presented during the Charleena Lyles inquest concluded after 20 hours of deliberation, Seattle Police Officers used “reasonable force” and were left with no other options beyond lethal force.
Lyle’s grandfather exploded in anger after the verdict was read, and was escorted from the courtroom.
The jurors had to use the legal standard for evaluating user of force police conduct that existed in 2017, which required the finding of “malice” or “evil intent.” In 2019, Washington state law was changed to remove the requirement. Jurors were asked to consider more than 100 questions, including if the officers’ actions were done with “malice.”
On June 17, 2017, Charleena Lyles called 911 to report a burglary. Seattle Police officers had been to her apartment two weeks earlier and knew she was in a mental health crisis. Jason Anderson and Steven McNew were the responding officers and neither had less-lethal options with them. Officer Anderson had stopped carrying his department-provided taser a few days earlier and McNew was not certified to carry one.
Officers enter the apartment, and despite knowing that Lyles was having mental health issues, did not ask her to put away some knives that were on the kitchen counter. During the interaction, the inquest determined that Lyles had grabbed one of the knives and would not comply with the officers’ orders. The inquest found that Lyles threatened Anderson and McNew with deadly force, leaving them no other option due to the tight quarters of the apartment, and not carrying less-lethal weapons. They fired their service weapons seven times, striking Lyles, who was pregnant, multiple times. Lyles died at the scene and her death was witnessed by two of her four children.
In 2018, Office Anderson was suspended for two days after a Seattle Office of Police Accountability investigation determined he had violated department policy but not having his taser. The OPA finds determined that the incident may have turned out differently if Anderson had a less-lethal option available.
Lyles’s family filed a $10 million lawsuit against the city of Seattle in 2020. The lawsuit was dismissed, but reinstated on appeal in 2021. The case was set to go to trial in February, but the family and the City of Seattle reached a $3.5 million settlement in November 2021.
King County Prosecutor Dan Sattenberg said that his office would review the evidence presented during the inquest and make a final determination on whether criminal charges will be filed. Because the pre-2019 standard of proving “malice” or “evil intent” is a requirement to secure a conviction, it is unlikely criminal charges will move forward.
[KIRKLAND, Wash.] – MTN On February 26, 2020, in the Totem Lake Fred Meyer parking lot in Kirkland, FBI agents moved in and arrested neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division leader Cameron Brandon Shea of Redmond, Washington, on a warrant for four felonies. Shea, who worked in the Seattle suburb grocery store, was arrested with four coconspirators on various charges. On the surface, Atomwaffen appears to be an internally created extremist group that identifies with the policies of Nazi Germany. In reality, the group has ties to the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM), and former Washington state residents Kaleb James Cole and Aiden Bruce Umbaugh likely received military training in St. Petersburg, Russia.
The trail that led three Washingtonians to connect with Russian neo-Nazi terrorist leaders follows a twisted path that begins in the mind of a 14-year-old American in 1966. The road winds through a global white nationalist movement with roots in St. Petersburg, Russia, leading to the creation of Iron March by a Russian national who used the pseudonym of Alexander Slavros, and amplified by Brandon Clint Russell. In late 2015, the Atomwaffen division in the United States was born, and a few months later, Cole created the Washington Divison of Atomwaffen in the suburbs of Seattle. Among those who created a deeper connection to the terrorist organization RIM? The founder of the white power Traditionalist Worker Party and Iron Dome, Matthew Heimbach.
Russell, a dual citizen of The Bahamas and the United States, was openly radicalized in his teens. He engaged in the online forum Iron March, where he quickly grew credibility among the neo-Nazi movement. Despite his beliefs being public and his direct ties to five radicalized far-right organizations, Russell was able to enlist in the Florida National Guard. A 2017 double homicide investigation in Tampa, Florida, revealed Russell’s connections and the discovery of bomb-making materials, radioactive isotopes, and neo-Nazi propaganda.
Russell was never charged with the murder of his roommates, both members of Atomwaffen. He was arrested on federal charges and, in September 2017, pled guilty to possessing an unregistered destructive device and illegally storing explosives. Within Russell’s orbit was John Cameron Denton, one of the earliest members of Atomwaffen. Between 2016 and 2017 and likely before his arrest, Russell passed leadership to the neo-Nazi group to him.
Heimbach was influenced by the ramblings of cult leader Charles Manson and his admirer James Mason. Mason is considered the Godfather of fascist terrorism in North America. Among white nationalists, the 1992 book The Seige is a manifesto for creating a global race war to establish white nationalist rule. Mason’s writings call for the creation of autonomous neo-Nazi terror cells and the destruction of the United States government.
Mason’s radicalization started when he was 14 and joined the American Nazi Party (ANP) in the 1960s. After the founder of the ANP was assassinated in 1967, Mason wandered for several years before joining the National Socialist Liberation Front. In 1982 Mason started writing letters to Manson disciples Sandra Good and Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme. The pair were imprisoned for participating in the grizzly Manson Family murder spree in 1969, leaving seven dead. Good and Fromme introduced Mason to Manson through correspondence, and Manson, from his prison cell, formed the Universal Order movement with Mason in 1982.
Mason had started writing a series of essays in 1980 for a self-published monthly newsletter called The Seige. From 1980 to 1986, Mason praised Manson and professed that the cult leader would be the ideal person to mold a new Nazi leadership in a post-race-fueled civil war America. Michael Moynihan (not to be confused with the American journalist) was a reader of The Seige, and in 1992 he edited and published the writings as a book called The Seige: The Collective Writings of James Mason. In 2003, the Black Sun Press republished the book under a new name, The Seige. and added a foreword written by Mason.
Around the same time The Seige was being prepared for publication Stanislav Vorobyev formed RIM in St. Petersburg, Russia. The ultranationalist organization embraces neo-Nazi ideology, wants to restore Russia to its pre-1917 borders, eliminate those not of ethno-Russian blood and re-establish rule by the Russian Orthodox Church and white nationalists with bloodlines to the tsarist Romanovs.
RIM didn’t draw much attention in post-Soviet collapsed Russia until 2007 when Vorobyev formed the Rezerv Paramilitary Club (RPC). In Russia, paramilitary clubs are legal and controlled by the Voluntary Society for Cooperation with the Army, Aviation, and Navy (DOSAAF). DOSAAF was created in the 1950s by the Soviet Union to promote a healthy lifestyle and teach the history of Russian military glory. The RPC formed a paramilitary training camp at an abandoned Soviet-era military base in St. Petersburg with the blessing of the Kremlin.
In 2012 with support from then Russian Federation President Dmitry Medvedev, RIM formed the New Force political party. The platform softened its extremist message to become more palatable to the Russian public. It claimed to support “democratic values” but called for restricting immigration to ethnic Russians and holding undocumented immigrants in slave labor camps. In 2013 working with other Russian-based neo-Nazi groups, RIM went public, organizing an anti-immigration protest in Voronezh, Russia.
In late 2013 as Ukraine made its intentions of pulling away from the Kremlin known, Vorobyev wrote, “The stability of anti-Russian regimes on all the territory inhabited by the Russian ethnos” is the greatest threat to the “Russian national survival.” Working with pro-Russian figures in Ukraine, members of RIM were involved in destabilizing the Kyiv government and fomenting Euromaidan counterprotests that led to dozens of deaths.
On February 28, 2014, the day after the Russian military occupied the Crimea Peninsula, members of RIM flew with the Russian military to Sevastopol. Among the passengers were Vorobyev and Nikolay Trushchalov, the head of external affairs for RIM. In March, four members of RIM met with neo-Nazi pro-Russian separatist leaders in the Ukrainian city of Donetsk.
After the meeting in Donetsk, RIM coordinated with other ultranationalist and pro-Nazi organizations in Russia, including Rodina. It held a demonstration in Moscow to support ethnic Russians living in Ukraine. In a cynical twist, Russian organizations aligned with Nazi ideology led protests accusing the legitimate government in Kyiv of Nazi atrocities.
Around the same time, the RPC received its new name, the Russian Imperial Legion, and started training mercenaries to fight against Ukraine. RIM actively recruited military veterans and provided two weeks of combat training, sending squad-sized groups into separatist-controlled Ukraine through humanitarian corridors. RIM mercenaries reported directly into the Russian 1st and 2nd Army Corps of the Donetsk (DNR) and Luhansk People’s Republics (LNR). Vorobyev and Trushchalov worked with Russian military veteran and Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) agent Igor Girkin (who goes by the alias Igor Strelkov). Girkin is accused of being directly responsible for the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which killed 298 when a Boeing 777-200ER was shot down on the Ukraine-Russia border. Girkin was the first commander of the 1st Army Corps of the DNR and had up to 300 RIM-provided mercenaries of the Imperial Legion under his command.
The troops led by Girkin were accused of committing dozens of atrocities against Ukrainians and Ukrainian soldiers. Even today, Girkin on Telegram rails against prisoner of war exchanges done by the Russian Federation in Ukraine and reminds his followers that if he was still in charge of the DNR 1st Army Corps, he would take no prisoners.
In the fall of 2014, Girkin was forced to flee to Russia after a series of military failures in the Donbas, refusal to comply with the directives of the Kremlin and the negative publicity from the downing of Flight 17. The FSB started a purge of Girkin-aligned leaders in the 1st Army Corps due to their ideology being out of alignment with Moscow’s goals. But among white nationalists and neo-Nazis, the credibility of RIM and the Imperial Legion grew, gaining international attention on Telegram, the dark web, and the Russian Facebook clone VKontakte.
Although overt racism and white nationalism were pushed just under the surface in American society starting in the late 1970s, the ideology and its purveyors didn’t fade away. The Internet, economic dissatisfaction caused by the Great Recession of 2008, and the election of Barack Obama and his “liberal agenda” caused the movement to rise back to the surface. Hate groups found the Internet was the perfect place to share their message, radicalize people in their youth, and recruit members to their ranks. The organizations weaponized the First Amendment to support their cause while amplifying their messages through the use of marketing agencies, troll farms, and automated bots. Social media companies and web host providers were slow to respond.
Among those to embrace this newfound acceptance was Heimbach, the co-founder of the Traditionalist Worker Party. In 2011, he joined the Youth for Western Civilization (YFWC) club at Towson University in Maryland. Like Mason and Russell, Heimbach’s radicalization started in his teens, and like RIM founder Vorobyev in Russia, he earned a degree in history. In 2012 Heimbach wrote in the YFWC blog, “No longer will the homosexual, Muslim, and black supremacist groups be allowed to hijack our campus. [We are] preparing to take our campus back, all we need is the help of people like you to make it happen.”
For the administration of Towson University, the blog posts and campus vandalism with the messages of “white pride” and “white guilt is over” scrawled on sidewalks and buildings was a bridge too far. In the spring of 2012, the university dissolved the YFWC chapter. Undeterred, Heimbach created the White Student Union and invited Jared Taylor, the creator of the ultranationalist faux think tank American Renaissance, to speak at the university. Taylor was so impressed by Heimbach’s radical views on race that he took him under his wing.
In 2013 Taylor invited Heimbach to speak at the American Renaissance conference in Nashville, Tennessee. Another featured speaker was neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, a speaker, and organizer of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. Taylor’s session was called “Report from the Trenches.” At the conference, Heimbach asked Paul Ramsey, “Where do we create our ethnostate?”
Ramsey replied, “We need to Balkanize and create our own homeland. We have a right to exist.”
With white nationalist movements moving to the open in the United States and Russia and politicians in both countries embracing the ideology, the twin paths a world apart were on a collision course.
In 2015 the International Conservative Forum of Russia was held in St. Petersburg with support from the Russian government. The conference was organized by Rodina and RIM, attracting leaders and influencers of white nationalist organizations from Germany, Italy, Greece, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the United States. Among the attendees from the United States was Taylor of American Renaissance. Also in attendance was Russell, who had already laid the foundation to create Atomwaffen.
Russell began spreading his ultranationalist message online in 2011 when he was 16 years old, creating the neo-Nazi organization Iron March in 2013. In 2015 while in St. Petersburg, he met with Taylor of American Renaissance and the leaders of the Nordic Resistance Movement of Sweden, the National Action group of Germany, CasPound of Italy, and Golden Dawn of Greece. In October of 2015, Russell announced the creation of Atomwaffen in Florida.
Shortly after the same conference and Taylor’s return to the United States, his pupil Heimbach formed Iron Dome. The new organization was created in parallel with the Traditionalist Worker Party, but aligned with the call of direct action and terror cell-based ultranationalism. Iron Dome would eventually merge with Atomwaffen.
Matthew Heimbach’s Traditional Worker Party of the United States and the Russia Imperial Movement show unity between the two groups in this Facebook graphic
Members of the Nordic Resistance Movement who attended the Russian forum in 2015 returned to St. Petersburg in 2016 and received combat training from RIM. From November 2016 to January 2017, Nordic Resistance Movement members Anton Thulin, Viktor Melin, and a third coconspirator executed three terrorist attacks in Gothenburg, Sweden. The trio targeted a coffee shop and two asylum homes for refugees. In the third incident, the bomb failed to detonate. The three were tried and found guilty of the attacks and sentenced to 8-1/2 years in prison.
At the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Heimbach met members of the Atomwaffen Division and moved the Traditionalist Workers Party further right, fully embracing anti-Semtisim and white nationalism. According to ProPublica and the Southern Poverty Law Center, Heimbach wrote on Discord after Charlottesville, “The Jews will use their guns to try to stop us, but also their pigs and courts to try to break our spirits.” In the same post, he referred to people of the white race as victims of the “Zionist Occupation Government” – repeating the antisemitic conspiracy that a Jewish deep state international conspiracy runs the United States government. Heimbach was enamored with Atomwaffen, calling the group “our friends.”
After Charlottesville, RIM’s Western European representative Stanislav Shevchuk traveled to the United States to establish connections between RIM and far-right extremist white nationalist groups. Heimbach had become a regular on American news programs, interviewed by the mainstream media where he was given an open platform to share his white nationalist views. Due to Heimbach’s public profile in the United States and his connections to Taylor, Mason, Spencer, and his embrace of Atomwaffen, Shevchuk asked to meet with the white nationalist figure. Despite being a highly visible voice for white nationalism in the United States, behind the curtain, he held little influence. The real power brokers in Atomwaffen were Cole, Shea, Russell, and Denton, who was the leader of Atomwaffen in the United States.
Matthew Heimbach (left) and Stanislav Shevchuk (right) hold the flag of the Russia Imperial Movement in front of the White House in 2017
Heimbach gave Shevchuk a guided tour of Washington D.C., where they displayed the RIM nationalist flag outside the White House. They also visited Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and posed in front of a statue of Robert E. Lee with a Confederate flag and the RIM nationalistic flag of black, yellow, and white.
While Heimbach was the bearded smiling face of white nationalism and anti-Semitism, Cole, Shea, Russell, and Denton were moving ahead with a far more violent plan influenced by Mason. In 2016, Cole founded the Washington chapter of Atomwaffen in the shadow of Seattle.
Although Seattle and Portland, Oregon are perceived to be liberal strongholds, both cities lie in what was once the Oregon Territory which passed increasingly aggressive anti-immigration legislation. On June 18, 1844, the Oregon Territory Provisional Government passed a law that Blacks attempting to settle in the territory would be publicly whipped with 39 lashes every six months.
On September 27, 1850, the United States Congress passed the Donation Land Claim Act, which made it illegal for anyone other than whites, or whites of mixed race with indigenous peoples, to settle in the Oregon Territory. The law designated that any white male United States citizen eighteen years or older could claim a 320-acre parcel of land free of charge in parts of modern-day Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Wyoming.
More than 160 years later, hate groups, white nationalist organizations, anti-Semites, and neo-Nazis thrive just out of view. The Proud Boys, III%, Patriot Front, and Patriot Prayer operate in the open and actively recruit members online and among the antivaccination and antigovernment communities.
Overt racism, anti-Black, and anti-immigration legislation and violence continued in the Pacific Northwest for more than a century, the echoes continuing to impact immigration patterns within the United States. The 2020 United Census showed that people who identify as Black make up 1% of Idaho, 2% of Oregon, and 4.3% of Washington – 13.4% of people in the United States identify as Black. For Atomwaffen, Western Washington was a fertile ground to recruit new members who grew up in a monocultural environment and saw everything wrong in the world shimmering in the Seattle skyline.
Cole’s life was ordinary before becoming an Atomwaffen Divison leader. He grew up in Everett, spent time in Bellingham, and eventually moved to Arlington. By 2015 he was already deeply radicalized and held neo-Nazi beliefs. Members of Atomwaffen practiced firing guns in the forests north of Seattle. In 2018 Cole and Aiden Bruce-Umbaugh, of Olympia, Washington embarked on a one-month trip to Germany, Poland, Ukraine, and allegedly Russia, where they had a purpose.
During that trip, Cole and Bruce-Umbaugh allegedly traveled to St. Petersburg and received combat training from RIM. The pair slipped into Russia through Ukraine using a green corridor in the Donbas. After completing Imperial Legion training, the pair traveled back through Ukraine, entered Poland, and visited the Nazi Concentration Camp Auschwitz. A picture was taken on the train tracks that lead to the extermination camp, Bruce-Umbagh with a thumbs up and Cole pointing to the sky. Cole wasn’t flashing a number one but referencing the extermination of ethnic Jews at the death camp and the ash and smoke rising from the incinerators.
Aiden Bruce-Umbaugh (left) and Kaleb James Cole (right) pose outside the main entrance at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland after recently completing combat training in Russia
The training in firearms, explosives, moving as a squad, and terrorist tactics were taken back to Washington state. At an abandoned cement factory in Concrete, members of Atomwaffen attended “hate camps” to train in guerilla and urban warfare and fire automatic weapons. Cole, despite never being in the United States military or having received any military training of public record, also set up a second “hate camp” in the Nevada desert near Death Valley.
Cole was also behind the editing and design of propaganda, posters, and slick recruiting videos. The scenes from “Devil’s Tower,” as the locals called the graffiti-covered ruins, closely resemble the videos made by Russian-proxy troops from Chechnya. The soldiers in those videos are called the “Chechen TikTok unit” and create numerous videos of fighters shooting wildly at nothing and staging raids of empty buildings.
Atomwaffen members holding the organization’s flag during weapons training in Concrete, Washington
In 2018, neo-Nazi posters began appearing at churches, government offices, and public areas in Kirkland, Redmond, and Bellevue. The posters and propaganda appeared across the region for almost two years. The content was never connected back to Atomwaffen, but the designs of some of the materials were similar. Emboldened by the sign campaign, Patriot Front also distributed materials in the suburban areas east of Seattle.
A 2018 investigation by ProPublica found Atomwaffen had cells in 23 states and was growing in influence and violence. By 2019 federal, state, county, and local authorities were increasingly concerned by Atomwaffen’s actions and rhetoric. Domestic terrorist experts believed that the language was moving from suggesting there should be a race war to purge the United States to discussing direct action. On September 26, 2019, a King County judge granted the Seattle Police Department’s request to issue an extreme risk protection order on Cole. In October, authorities seized five military-style rifles, three handguns, gun parts, and ammunition at Cole’s residence in Arlington.
Cole had an opportunity to have his guns returned at a hearing a couple of weeks later but instead fled to Montgomery, Texas, where he found refuge with Denton. The extreme risk protection order was automatically extended for a year because Cole defaulted by not attending the hearing. Because of Cole’s propaganda abilities and combat training, Denton allegedly made Cole the Texas leader of Atomwaffen. His tenure would be very short-lived, as Shea had already made a mistake and allowed an FBI informant to infiltrate the group.
Graphic design work by Kaleb James Cole threatened the press, featured Nazi symbols, Charles Manson, and scenes of open revolution
Only days after arriving in Texas, Cole was involved in a November 4, 2019, traffic stop in the west Texas town of Post, with Bruce-Umbaugh in the passenger seat. Police found marijuana, concentrated THC, an AR-15, two AK-47s, a 9mm pistol, and 1,500 rounds of ammunition. The extreme risk protection order on Cole was flagged during the stop, but Bruce-Umbaugh claimed that the drugs and guns were his. Cole was behind the wheel of the blue Ford Focus with Washington plates, and despite this glaring discrepancy, Bruce-Umbaugh was arrested, and Cole was released.
A month later, the mistake was identified, and a warrant was issued for Cole’s arrest for unlawful possession of a firearm with bail set at $20,000. Bruce-Umbaugh was unable to post bond for his release and languished in a west Texas jail cell, where authorities confronted him about a nascent Atomwaffen plot.
In November 2019, Shea had unknowingly contacted an FBI informant and invited the agent to join a budding operation to threaten journalists across the country. His goal was to “erode the media/states air of legitimacy by showing people they have names and addresses, and hopefully embolden others to act.” The informant worked with Shea on his plans and through conversations exposed other Atomwaffen members, including Cole, now hiding in the outskirts of Houston. An undercover agent visited Cole in January 2020, and in a sworn statement claimed the newly minted Atomwaffen Division leader of Texas was wearing a Klu Klux Klan robe.
Later that same month, Atomwaffen threatened a Seattle TV news reporter, the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League Pacific Northwest Chapter, and attempted to threaten a Florida reporter. In the Florida incident, the flyers were affixed to the wrong home.
On February 26, 2020, the group was unraveled by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force. Operation Erste Saule arrested five members of Atomwaffen in four states. John Cameron Denton and Kaleb J. Cole were arrested in Texas. Cameron Brandon Shea was arrested in Kirkland, Washington, as he walked into a Fred Meyer grocery store to start his work shift. Also arrested were John Garza of Arizona and Tyler “Taylor” Parker-Dipeppe of Florida.
Bruce-Umbaugh was also federally charged while he was still sitting in a west Texas jail cell. On February 3, 2020, he pled guilty to federal charges of possession of firearms and ammunition by a prohibited person.
Three months after Operation Erste Saule and the FBI investigation revealing the military training of Atomwaffen members in St. Petersburg, Russia, the United States Department of State designated the Russia Imperial Movement and members of its leadership as Specially Designated Global Terrorists. It was the first time the United States government had declared a white supremacist group a terrorist organization.
On April 6, 2020, Vorobyev, Nikolayevich, and Denis Garijev were designated as terrorists “for providing training for acts of terrorism that threaten the national security and foreign policy of the United States and being leaders of such a group.”
In September of the same year, National Counterterrorism Center Director Christopher Miller confirmed that United States members of the “extreme right” had traveled to Russia for military training. Testifying before Congress with FBI Director Chris Wray, Miller reported Americans have traveled to Russia to train with RIM and the Imperial Legion. He added that the relationship between extremists in the United States and RIM had remained casual and had not organized into cross-nation terrorism. Miller did not list the names of the organizations or individuals that had trained with the Imperial Legion during his testimony.
The Russian Federation does not consider RIM a terrorist organization. A Kremlin spokesperson defended the group and its military training of foreign fighters declaring, “We are also not going to prohibit foreigners from coming to visit their barracks or receive training. That is its purpose.”
Like many countries that identify as being formed by people with white ancestry, Ukraine has its own problem with neo-Nazi ideology. A lot of digital ink has been spilled about the history of the Azov Battalion and its founding members identifying with white supremacism and Nazi beliefs. While white nationalist extremists founded the Azov Battalion in 2014, the military unit slowly shifted its political alignment and views during the last six years. The early ranks were mostly filled with Russian-speaking residents of eastern Ukraine and were funded partly by Jewish businessperson and billionaire Ihor Kolomoyskyi. The group was colloquially called “The Men In Black” to counter Russia’s “little green men.”
Before the war in Ukraine, members of Atomwaffen were still within the ranks of the Azov Battalion. The battalion ejected the extremists from its ranks in 2020, including those with Atomwaffen.
When the Russia-Ukraine War started on February 24, Russian propaganda had turned the Azovs into mythical monsters while ignoring the thousands of ultranationalist neo-Nazis being trained and deployed to Ukraine under the watchful eye of DOSAAF. It used the group as justification to invade Ukraine for “denazification.” Despite the legends, the Azov Regiment had fewer than 3,000 troops, including Israeli foreign volunteers within the ranks. In May 2022, new insignia for the unit was introduced, wiping the last hints of its white nationalist founding.
While the Kremlin and the social media accounts it backs push a denazification agenda in Ukraine, it is estimated that several thousand members of the Imperial Legion are fighting in Ukraine, concentrated in Izyum and the Donbas. In an ironic twist, ultranationalist mercenaries with the Imperial Legion fought in Mariupol, likely against the Azov Battalion, to “denazify” Ukraine.
In Izyum, Ukraine, two mercenaries with Russian Private Military Company Wagner Group pose outside the destroyed hospital in the city center. The person on the left is trained by the Imperial Legion and wearing a Nazi-inspired patch.
While the alleged atrocities of Azov are mostly limited to memes, propaganda, and disinformation, an internal report of the German Federal Intelligence Service BND claims that the Imperial Legion engages in destroying cultural icons that don’t align with the Russian Orthodox Church and tortures and executes Ukrainian prisoners of war.
Unlike Russia, all 50 states ban private militias that are involved in extremist activity or move their presence into the public domain. Despite these regulations, enforcement is almost non-existent. It is estimated there are almost 300 private militias operating in the United States. They represent a fertile ground for recruitment to fight in Ukraine with Russian extremist organizations and Private Military Companies such as the Wagner Group. For those that survive, they bring back that experience, which can be applied to future domestic terrorism.
Kaleb James Cole was convicted of conspiracy, three counts of mailing threatening communications, and one count of interfering with a federally protected activity. On January 11, Cole was sentenced to 84 months in federal prison. Cole has been labeled a terrorist by Canada.
Cameron Brandon Shea pled guilty to one count of conspiring to commit three offenses against the United States: interference with federally-protected activities because of religion and one count of interfering with a federally protected activity because of religion. On April 25, Shea was sentenced to 36 months in federal prison.
Aiden Bruce-Umbaugh pled guilty to possessing firearms and ammunition by a prohibited person. On April 28, 2020, he was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison. While awaiting his sentencing in jail, he bragged to other inmates about his photo at Auschwitz and openly told others he was a Nazi.
John Cameron Denton was convicted of conspiracy and a hate crime for “swatting” over 130 people. Denton participated in a conspiracy that conducted swatting attacks between October 2018 and February 2019. Swatting is a harassment tactic that involves deceiving emergency dispatchers into believing that a person or persons are in imminent danger of death or bodily harm and causing the dispatchers to send police and emergency services to an unwitting third party’s address. Denton chose his targets motivated by racial hatred. On May 4, 2021, Denton was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison.
Johnny Roman Garza pled guilty to conspiracy to mail threatening communications, to commit stalking, and to interfere with federally protected activities. On September 8, 2020, he was sentenced to 16 months in federal prison.
Tyler “Taylor” Parker-Dipeppe pled guilty to conspiracy to mail threatening communications, to commit stalking, and to interfere with federally protected activities. Taylor, who is transgender, uses he/him pronouns and goes by the name Tyler, was abused by his biological father and stepfather growing up. Growing up in Egg Harbor, New Jersey, he was so severely bullied in school for identifying as male, that he brought a lawsuit against the school and was paid a $50,000 settlement. Parker-Dipeppe fell into Atomwaffen when he was 15 or 16, and found a family within the group while hiding he is transgender.
As the only person in the Florida Atomwaffen cell that owned a car, he and another member drove to St. Petersburg, Florida to affix threatening posters on a journalist’s home, but went to the wrong house. After making the threat, Parker-Dipeppe confessed to his mother what had happened and was afraid the group would learn he is transgender. He confessed his LGBTQIA status to Shea in Washington state and was kicked out of Atomwaffen.
On September 8, 2020, United States District Judge John Coughenour sentenced Parker-Dipeppe to time served, saying he struggled with sentencing but given his history, “enough is enough.” Parker-Dipeppe is now married and employed, and fears that he will be targeted for violence in the future.
Brandon Clint Russell pled guilty to one count of possessing an unregistered destructive device and one count of unlawful storage of explosive material. On January 9, 2018, he was sentenced to 60 months in federal prison. While awaiting sentencing in jail, Russell tried to send bomb-making information to members of Atomwaffen. He wrote in one letter, “I don’t care how long you put me in jail, your Honor, … as soon as I get out, I will go right back to fight for my White Race and my America!” Russell will be eligible for release in January 2023.
Matthew Heimbach’s life and connections with the white nationalist movement fell apart in 2017. On March 2, 2016, Heimbach was caught on camera harassing and shoving a Black woman at a Donald Trump rally in Louisville, Kentucky. As the incident unfolded, then-candidate Trump yelled, “get her out!” On May 17, 2017, Heimbach was charged with misdemeanor harassment. Heimbach called the charges “politically motivated” and said he “acted pursuant to the directives and requests of Donald J. Trump.” On July 20, 2017, Heimbach cut a plea deal. He was fined $145 and sentenced to 90 days in jail for second-degree disorderly conduct. The sentence was suspended through a deferred adjudication agreement that required Heimbach not to get in further legal trouble for the next two years.
On March 14, 2018, Heimbach was arrested again for two counts of domestic violence assault against his wife, Jessica Parrott, and his father-in-law Matt Parrott. Ms. Parrott believed that Heimbach was having an affair, so she and her father set up a sting operation to confirm her suspicions. Her suspicion was well placed, but to the pair’s surprise, Heimbach was having an affair with his mother-in-law. Heimbach allegedly choked his father-in-law until he lost consciousness. Ms. Parrott told police that Heimbach “demanded that I tell the cops to leave,” kicked a wall, grabbed her face, and threw me face-first into a bed.” Despite violating his deferred adjudication agreement and being charged with two domestic violence assaults, bail was set for $1,000.
On May 16, 2018, Heimbach was sentenced to 37 days in jail for violating his 2017 plea agreement. In a June 2018 hearing, the Parrotts did not want to pursue charges. After the 2018 domestic violence incident, the Traditionalist Worker Party, which Heimbach founded with Parrott, collapsed.
The neo-Nazi and white nationalist movements have rejected Heimbach, labeling him a traitor, informant, and a communist. In 2020, he stated he was done with identifying with white nationalism.
Heimbach was named a defendant in Sines v. Kessler in October 2017 due to the violence that erupted at the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally. Heimbach was found liable for civil conspiracy and ordered to pay $500,000 in punitive damages.
James Mason still writes about Charles Manson, calls for violence against Jews, and his support of neo-Nazi ideals. He is currently considered the leader of Atomwaffen, an allegation he denies. Mason claims that Atomwaffen collapsed in 2020 after the arrests of key leaders.
Mason has a significant criminal record including a 1992 guilty plea of “illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented materials” after two police raids in 1988 and 1991 found child pornography in his home. He was fined $500. In 1994 Mason was arrested again and charged with two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor and two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Mason, who was 42 years old at the time, had threatened his Latina 16-year-old ex-girlfriend and her mother with a gun. He was sentenced to 36 months in prison.
Jared Taylor continues to lead the faux think tank American Renaissance. Taylor doesn’t view Jews as a threat to a new order. He severed his ties with Heimbach as he became more radicalized by RIM and Atomwaffen. In 2017, Taylor had a front-row VIP seat at the inauguration of President Donald Trump. Taylor is banned from traveling to 26 European Union nations that comprise the Schengen Area.
Richard Spencer’s life also fell apart in 2017. Spencer planned to hold a neo-Nazi march in Whitefish, Montana, in January 2017. Congressional Representative Ryan Zinke, Senator Steve Daines, Senator Jon Tester, Montana Governor Steve Bullock, and Montana Attorney General Tim Fox condemned the planned event. The community of Whitefish rallied to create a counterprotest, and the march never happened. Spencer became a pariah in Montana and was forced to move to an apartment in Virginia.
In 2014 while doing a speaking tour in Hungary, Spencer enraged Prime Minister Viktor Orban so much, that the right-wing leader pressed through legislation that banned Spencer – the Polish government passed a similar measure. In 2018 Spencer was detained in Iceland trying to enter Sweden and was forced to return to the United States due to his ban on travel in the Schengen Area.
Also, in 2018, his Russian-born wife filed for divorce, accusing him of being abusive in their marriage. Audio recordings and text messages sent to Nina Kouprianova threatened to break her nose and encouraged her to commit suicide.
Spencer was threatened with jail time in June 2020, owing more than $60,000 to the guardian ad litem assigned to defend the interests of the two children he had with his ex-wife. He was also named a defendant in Sines v. Kessler in October 2017 and ordered to pay $500,000 in punitive damages.
Stanislav Shevchuk was sanctioned by the United States Department of Treasury on June 15, 2022, for reaching out to individuals in the United States for the purpose of identifying racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists to support fundraising, training, and recruitment.
Russia Imperialist Movement – RIM does not support Russian President Vladimir Putin and his regime. Still, they see his policies and the war in Ukraine as a means to move their white nationalistic plan forward. It is believed several thousand mercenaries are part of the Imperial Legion fighting in Ukraine, the Central African Republic, Lybia, and Syria. The Imperialist Movement maintains Russian sanction training centers in St. Petersburg and Moscow (both in Russia). It is believed the Imperial Legion assists in training contract volunteers of the Russian army and forced conscripts of the DNR and LNR north of Izyum, Ukraine. Imperial Legion fighters report directly to the Russian armed forces command structure and work cooperatively with the Russian Federation Armed Forces, DNR, and LNR separatists. They continue to train foreign fighters in combat and terrorist tactics worldwide with the blessing of the Kremlin.
[SEATTLE, Wash.] – MTN At approximately 12:45 PM, the Seattle Police Department’s bomb squad was called to the 6500 block of Martin Luther King Blvd. in Seattle to investigate a 55-gallon drum with a “thin blue line” flag that had multiple wires connected to it placed on the sidewalk. The bomb squad determined the device was not a threat.
Residents started to inquire about the display in the morning on social media, eventually leading to a police response. When officers arrived and saw the barrel had wires connected to it, they closed Martin Luther King Blvd. and deployed the bomb squad.
Sound Transit suspended train service between the Columbia City Station and Othello Station due to the police investigation. Link Shuttle busses were used between the stations and diverted around the area of police activity.
How do I report this suspicious package that’s all wired up on the sidewalk in Seattle on MLK? pic.twitter.com/Uw7SW49eAZ
[SEATTLE, Wash] – MTN Off-duty Seattle Police Department SWAT officers went to the Children’s and Family Justice Center in Seattle, where an inquest into the 2017 shooting death of Charleena Lyles is being held, for a “security check” after one of the officers told his sergeant he was “afraid” after a confrontation with Lyles’s family on June 22.
On Wednesday, after an emotional day of testimony that included graphic pictures and videos of Lyles after Seattle Police shot her, the officers walked through a hallway where Lyles’s family was seated. There was a verbal confrontation, and one of the officers was called a “coward.” The officer called his sergeant, saying he was afraid for his safety after the incident. On Friday, off-duty SWAT officers went to the courthouse where the inquest was being held unannounced. Seattle police do not have jurisdiction over the Children’s and Family Justice Center, which the King County Sheriff’s Department handles.
King County Sheriff Sgt. Jim Donner, responsible for the courthouse’s security, told the Seattle Times the security check was “surprising.” Surveillance cameras recorded the Wednesday incident. It did not show that any threats were issued to the officer or other actions that would have reasonably put him in fear.
After reviewing the surveillance video on Monday, Inquest Administrator Michael Spearman called the response “excessive” and chastised the Seattle Police Department. Spearmen told the department to “avoid” the Lyles family.
During an interview on KIRO 97.3, The Lyles family accused the Seattle police of using intimidation tactics by sending members of the SWAT team to the courthouse.
On June 18, 2017, Lyles, who was expecting her fifth child, called 911 to report a burglary at her apartment. Lyles was known by the Seatle Police Department and known to have mental health issues. She was in a mental health crisis when police arrived, and the two officers accused Lyles of lunging at them with a knife. They fired seven shots, with several striking Lyles.
In the line of fire were at least two of Lyles’s children, two toddlers. An infant was in a crib in a bedroom down the hallway. One of the children ran out to the body of their mother seconds after she was shot and laid her head on her body. In audio recordings, the two officers expressed shock there were others in the apartment, and that the children could have been in the line of fire.
The conduct of the Seattle Police and their description of events was called into question, but Washington state law at the time required proof that a law enforcement officer acted with “malice” or “evil intent” to bring charges for alleged excessive use of force incidents. Legal experts have called it an impossible standard for decades. Before a change in Washington law in 2019, the state was considered one of the most difficult places to charge law enforcement officers for criminal misconduct in the line of duty.
In 2019 the law in Washington state changed, removing the malice and evil intent standard, making it possible to prosecute officers for use of force misconduct. Four officers, one in Auburn and three in Tacoma, are awaiting trials on various charges. In the Auburn case, police officer Jeff Nelson is awaiting trial for second-degree murder and first-degree assault in the shooting death of Jesse Sarey, who was also having a mental health crisis. Tacoma Police officers Christopher Burbank and Matthew Collins face second-degree murder charges, and officer Timothy Rankine faces first-degree manslaughter charges for the 2020 in-custody death of Manny “Manuel” Ellis.
The Lyles sued the city of Seatle for wrongful death in 2020, and a civil trial was scheduled for February 2022. In November 2021, the city of Seattle reached a $3.5 million settlement with the family.
Legal experts say that the two Seattle Police officers that shot Lyles could face criminal charges, depending on the finding of facts from the ongoing inquest. However, because Lyles was shot and killed in 2017, charges would have to be weighed against the old standard of malice or evil intent.
[NOOKSACK, Wash.] – The Nooksack Nation is pushing back against a United Nations request to halt planned evictions of 63 people who were disenrolled by the tribe in 2018, and currently reside on reservation land.
The dispute began in 2013 when the First Nation of about 2,000 recognized citizens, started disenrollment of 306 people whose ancestral claims were called into question. Nooksack members have to trace their family ties to a group of homesteaders or a 1942 census conducted by the U.S. government. the “Nooksack 306” claim there was an error made in the 1980s during their enrollment, and they have legitimate membership to the Tribe.
The process moved slowly until 2018 when members of the First Nation voted to approve disenrollment. At last count, 57 people who have been disenrolled live on reservation land. Some live in affordable housing while others rent or are in rent-to-own agreements. An additional six members who have not been disenrolled, live with people who have. Of the 57, nine live in affordable housing and are facing immediate eviction. Tribal leaders claim there are 60 members of the Nooksack on a waiting list for affordable housing, including some who are homeless, and they have followed proper procedures to start the eviction process.
Tribal leaders argue that those disenrolled are from a similar First Nation but among peoples from Canada. People who are facing eviction and represented by attorney Gabe Galanda claim the requirements for enrollment are based on a census done by “colonizers.” Because of the modern-day political and geographical boundaries, the arbitrary 49th parallel border between the United States and Canada didn’t exist during the time when the Nooksack peoples had sovereignty.
On Jan. 13, Nooksack Vice Chair Rick George agreed to pause evictions until Feb. 2, on the behest of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). A BIA investigation concluded that the tribe had “adhered to the terms of the Rental Agreements and NIHA Procedures.” The investigation was narrow in scope, limited to reviewing the First Nation’s eviction process and if met the due process requirements of the Indian Civil Rights Act (ICRA).
A statement on Feb. 4 from the Nooksack Nation read, “Today the Nooksack Indian Tribe reached out the United Nations High Commissioner demanding an immediate retraction after two UN special rapporteurs failed to contact the Nooksack Indian Tribe.”
“If you are descended from a Nooksack Tribal member and an Indian, you take your proof of lineage to the enrollment office and are granted citizenship,” the statement continued. “There were over 200 people – many represented by attorney Gabe Galanda – who said they were citizens, but who did not follow the rules for citizenship.”
The Nooksack Nation was recognized in 1855 and is part of the Coast Salish Peoples.
[KIRKLAND, Wash.] – (MTN) A small shift in the storm track with a little more intensification means widespread snow across Western Washington is likely on Christmas Day into Sunday morning. After the system moves out, record low temperatures will plunge Washington state into the deep freeze creating dangerous conditions.
The I-405 corridor can expect one to four inches of snow, with some areas potentially seeing more. The Bellevue-Kirkland-Woodinville area will get three to five inches from Saturday morning to Sunday afternoon. To help the houseless, warming centers, overnight shelters, and housing vouchers are being provided across the county.
Friday morning the low-pressure system that will become our snowmaker was further south and a little stronger than what the models predicted yesterday. The National Weather Service has not issued any weather warnings for the Puget Sound lowlands at the time we went to press, but we expect Winter Weather Advisories for part of Saturday, Saturday night, and part of Sunday posted later today.
Christmas Eve started with a mix of sun and high clouds for the region, but that will be ending soon. Between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m., the rain will move into the area with wet snowflakes mixed in above 500 to 1,000 feet.
Friday night temperatures will drop close to freezing in the Bellevue-Kirkland-Woodinville area, Lows will be 33 to 35 and the rain should transition to wet snow for a few hours overnight. Drivers should be cautious, especially on side streets, hills, bridges, and overpasses.
The forecast for Christmas Day is more complex than yesterday. Your location and elevation will decide how much snow will fall during the day. The urban canyons of Bellevue and Seattle, along the shoreline of Puget Sound and Lake Washington, and area hot spots like Totem Lake will see more rain than snow. The hilltops such as Queen Anne, Finn Hill in Kirkland, and the foothills in Woodinville, Duvall, and Issaquah will see more snow. Precipitation will be in showers so some locations may be mostly dry while others could get dumped on. To complicate things further high temperatures will be 36 to 38 – a couple of degrees cooler will turn that rain/snow mix into mostly snow. Additionally, conditions are more favorable for a Convergence Zone to form in the evening. Expect one to two inches of snow, with the potential for a couple of areas to get higher amounts.
Saturday night the low-pressure area is now predicted to be just off the northeastern tip of Washington. Cold air will start to be pulled down from the Fraser Valley and light snow showers will fall through the region. Another one to two inches of snow will fall, while the urban canyons of Seattle and Bellevue will get more of a rain/snow mix. Temperatures will be 25 to 27 degrees, warmer in the urban cores, and roads will become slippery.
Sunday will be cold with widespread light snow across the region into the early afternoon. The change of about 100 miles in the location of the low-pressure area has boosted the amount of snow with two to three inches expected in the Bellevue-Kirkland-Woodinville area. It is too soon to predict if a convergence zone will form, but the models are more interesting than yesterday. Snow will taper off in the evening with highs between 28 and 30 degrees.
On Sunday night snow showers will end and our region will experience record-breaking cold under mostly cloudy skies. Lows will be 8 to 11 degrees. The record low at SeaTac is 20 and doesn’t stand a chance.
Monday will be partly cloudy and very cold, with a high of 22 to 25.
Monday night will be partly cloudy and cold, with temperatures from 13 to 15 degrees. The record low at SeaTac Airport is 12, so a tie isn’t out of the realm of possibility.
Tuesday will be a slight improvement under partly cloudy skies with a high of 28 to 30 degrees.
The outlook for the rest of the week is for temperatures ten to 15 degrees below normal through Thursday, with only a slight improvement in the long-range forecast. Your weather apps might be showing a snowflake on Thursday too, but it’s too far out to make a prediction.
Cold temperatures will bring life threatening conditions
Temperatures this low are life-threatening to the houseless and Seattle’s Human Services Department is opening two overnight shelters from Dec. 25 to Dec. 29. One shelter will be located at Seattle Center Exhibition Hall and can serve about 100 people, 18 and older including pets. The other is located in Pioneer Square and can serve 80 people, 18 and older. Additionally, the Salvation Army can accommodate up to 240 people at its shelter in SODO.
The City of Kirkland announced they will be providing hotel vouchers to the unhomed in the city as well as opening warming centers. Hotel vouchers are available by contacting the City of Kirkland, police, fire, or parks departments or by calling (425) 577-5656. For families living at the safe parking lot at the Lake Washington United Methodist Church, vouchers for extended stay hotels have been provided.
Warming centers will be available at the following locations.
North Kirkland Community Center
December 27 – 29, 1 PM to 4 PM
December 30, 8 AM to 12 PM
Peter Kirk Community Center
December 27 – 29, 8 AM to 5 PM
December 30, 8 AM to 12 PM
Kirkland City Hall
December 30, 8 AM to 12 PM
Temperatures this low will be a danger to pets and backyard livestock. Cats and dogs will need places to escape the cold, ideally inside your house. Water bowls for animals will freeze up in this weather making it impossible for them to drink water.
Outside faucets should have hoses disconnected and be covered or wrapped to protect them from freezing. Setting your faucets to the slowest trickle keeps water moving in your pipes preventing freezing. For sinks that face outside walls of your home, open the cabinet doors to allow warm air to circulate. Know where the water shutoff valve is for your house and make sure if you need a tool to use it, that you have one.
Extended cold is also hard on your car’s batteries. If the starter battery in your car is over four years old, the cold snap could spell the end of its useful life. Hybrid and electric vehicles can lose effective range when it is this cold. This happens due to physics impacting battery performance and the increased draw from the cabin heater, window defrosters, and comfort accessories like heated seats. If you find your range is deteriorating turning off the cabin heat and using heated seats to stay warm uses less power.
[SEATTLE, Wash.] – (MTN) Despite COVID cases increasing in 31 states, millions of Americans will come together on Thursday to celebrate Thanksgiving. Established as a national holiday by the Roosevelt administration in 1941 to aid in economic recovery and boost morale as the nation came out of the grips of the Great Depression, the contemporary version of Thanksgiving Americans celebrate, bears little resemblance to its namesake feast attended by pilgrims and Wampanoags in New England in the early 17th century.
In a recent Washington Post article detailing Wampanoag feelings about Thanksgiving four centuries later, Mashpee Wampanoag Cultural Outreach Coordinator, Darius Coombs, stated: “For us, Thanksgiving kicked off colonization.” English settler-colonization produced devastating consequences for Indigenous peoples throughout the nation. It introduced deadly diseases, stripped Native peoples of their ancestral lands, aimed to eliminate Indigenous culture, and worked to erase any evidence of violence and genocide from its history.
The whitewashed version of the Thanksgiving myth told at dinner tables and at schools across the nation that portrays the relationship between pilgrims and Wampanoags as peaceful and reciprocal erases the dispossession and genocide of the Indigenous nations of the Northeast and other Native peoples that soon followed.
Indigenous peoples along the New England coast had already negotiated a series of encounters with Europeans by the time pilgrims reached Plymouth in 1620. Aside from encounters with the French, Spanish, and Dutch, Native peoples witnessed a failed English settlement attempt at Roanoke in the late 16th century and the establishment of the Jamestown colony in Virginia in 1607. Apart from Jamestown, most Europeans were temporary nuisances for Native peoples, as colonists often extracted resources and labor in service of the metropole—or home colony—before returning to their homeland. The English, however, never intended to leave, but rather to become permanent residents. This introduced a new and detrimental form of colonization Native peoples had yet to encounter.
While traditional colonialism generally resulted in temporary invasions, English settler colonialism had entirely different aims. As historian Patrick Wolfe explained, settler colonialism is a “structure, not an event,” whereby settler colonizers develop lasting institutions predicated on the elimination of Native peoples. Little did the Wampanoag know that the beleaguered visitors that reached their shores in early November of 1620 planned to stay.
Pilgrims reached the northeast at a time when Wampanoags experienced significant turmoil that included crippling waves of diseases introduced through contact with Europeans. Diseases dramatically decreased Wampanoag numbers and left the remaining population vulnerable to more powerful Native polities in the region, such as the Narragansett to the West. Wampanoag leader Massasoit, much to the chagrin of his people took a “wait and see” approach with the newcomers and hoped to create an alliance that offered a degree of mutual protection. With Tisquantum—a Wampanoag man who learned to speak English during his time as a captive—acting as a liaison, Massasoit hesitantly brokered an arrangement with pilgrims that later came back to not only haunt him but Native peoples for generations to come.
In the initial stages of this alliance, power swayed in the Wampanoag’s favor. As historian Colin Calloway notes, Europeans often depended on Native peoples “for food, information, and assistance in finding their way,” as well as “adjusting to a new environment.”
This proved no different for English colonists—especially relative to the environment. New England winters were unlike anything colonists experienced in their homeland. In fact, during their first winter at Plymouth, more than half of the pilgrim population died as a result of harsh conditions and resource scarcity. Thus, colonists were reliant on Indigenous people’s knowledge and hospitality to ensure their survival.
The fact colonists became dependent on Wampanoags is evidenced in a letter written in December of 1621 by Edward Winslow. Writing to a friend in England, Winslow noted how during the last spring colonists set “some twenty acres of Indian corn… and according to the manner of the Indians…manured our grounds with herrings.” Winslow also elaborated on colonists’ relations with Wampanoags, noting how they found them to be faithful allies and “often went to them” in times of need. Winslow’s letter goes on to demonstrate that during the early period of their relationship, the Wampanoags took on a paternal role: teaching pilgrims how to farm, gather food, and even hunt game in the wilderness—a place colonists often refused to go without the company of their Indigenous allies.
More interesting, though, are Winslow’s references to the first Thanksgiving. In this same letter, Winslow described the event that became a national myth as a “three-day feast attended by King Massasoit and some ninety men.” Winslow noted that Wampanoags “went out and killed five deer” for the feast “which they brought to the plantation and bestowed upon our governor, captain, and others.”
What Winslow detailed as a feast of celebration that included the Wampanoags and colonists leaves out one very important piece of information—pilgrims never intended to invite their Native allies to join in their festivities.
As many historians have documented, the Wampanoags only found out about the feast after colonists shot off rounds of celebratory gunfire. Concerned his allies might be in danger, Massasoit gathered many of his warriors and went to the colony to investigate. Upon arrival, colonists informed Massasoit they were celebrating a successful and bountiful harvest. In a demonstration of good faith and reciprocity, the Wampanoags gifted their English allies with five deer, which served as the focal point of the feast. Only after imparted these gifts upon their English friends, did colonists welcome their Native allies to join.
It is important to note that the celebration that became the root of the contemporary Thanksgiving myth would not have been possible without the Indigenous knowledge provided to colonists. And while the feast represents a cordial, yet unequal relationship between the two parties, English friendliness soon turned to hostility. The relationship once defined by coexistence ended, and a new relationship based on conflict and violence emerged.
Roughly five decades after the “first Thanksgiving” took place, an ever-growing population of colonists blatantly rejected the cordiality of their predecessors. By the late 1660s, Massasoit saw his people and territory shrink considerably—a consequence of the prolonged encounters between Native peoples and the English. Too old to continue in his position of leadership, Massasoit passed the torch to his son Metacomet, who is often referred to in the historical record by his English name “Philip.” Having grown weary of ongoing land encroachment and cultural destruction through religious conversion, Metacomet replaced friendliness with resistance, and in June of 1675, violent conflict broke out between Native peoples in the region and colonists that became known as “King Philips War.”
King Philips War lasted nearly three years and is recognized as “one of the bloodiest conflicts in American history.” This period of violence resulted in the destruction of numerous Native villages and the death of 2,500 English colonists equaling roughly thirty percent of the settler population. Native peoples in the region, however, failed to emerge victoriously.
Rather as violence and dispossession escalated, Metacomet watched as the English sold his wife and son into slavery in the Caribbean. Then, in an effort to deter further Indigenous resistance efforts, colonial leaders executed Metacomet. Viewing him as a “treacherous fiend who deserved a traitor’s death” the English quartered his body and cut off his head, placing it on a wooden pole at the entrance to Fort Plymouth where it remained for more than two decades. In the decades that followed, Native genocide exponentially increased as settler-colonists worked to dispossess Native peoples and gain control of valuable land and resources.
Despite this, Native peoples continue to find various ways to resist, rebuild, and heal from the generations of trauma settler colonization has produced. So, while many of us are actively and willingly participating in a reenactment of a tradition that has little basis in fact, Native peoples across the nation will reject the myth of Thanksgiving in favor of observing a day of mourning to reflect on all that they have lost—which all began with a friendly meal.
Most of us envision a romantic portrayal of Thanksgiving. Pilgrims, seeking freedom, come to the new land, and in peaceful cooperation with the Native Americans carve out a hardscrabble life. After a good harvest in their first year, the Pilgrims invite the local Native Americans for a feast, everyone ate turkey, and all were happy — the end.
There is also a revisionist story to Thanksgiving that the creation of the holiday is a blood-soaked nightmare. After the massacre of Native Americans, it was celebrated annually with a big turkey dinner to give thanks for the divine providence to clear the land of heathens.
Neither of these narratives is correct, and the story lies somewhere between.
The Pilgrim’s trip was financed by business interests who would buy cash crops from the Pilgrims upon the establishment of a colony in the new world, somewhere in the vicinity of modern New York City, south of the 42nd parallel, along the New Jersey coast. The story of that hurricane and the Mayflower almost sinking? True.
The sailing of the Pilgrims was supposed to be on two ships, the Mayflower and the Speedwell. The Speedwell was an unseaworthy wreck and waiting to attempt to repair her resulted in the crossing happening at the height of hurricane season. Instead of 65 onboard, there were 130 along with sheep, dogs, chickens, and goats. The settlers would not have been allowed on deck, so would have spent most of their time in the foul, smoke-filled air, smelling of waste and bilge, in a rolling sea. If it sounds awful, you’re right, it was.
The story of the printing press being used to secure a cracked timber in the Mayflower? Sort of true. A tool called a jackscrew, which is similar in appearance, was used to save the ship.
When the Pilgrims finally landed, they had been blown hopelessly off course and landed on what is today Cape Cod, not Plymouth. They sent a shore excursion and found the native population hostile. The real story is that white traders and fishermen had been coming to the northeast coast for decades to trade, trap, fish, and take slaves.
Realizing they had blown off course and were north of the 42 parallel, they created the Mayflower Compact, a bit of a dubious agreement of self-government with loyalty to the King of England. It was the first Democracy in the new world.
The Mayflower sailed around Cape Cod looking for safe harbor, and they arrived off what is modern-day Plymouth. There is no Plymouth rock (sorry) that the Pilgrims stepped out on, and if there were, centuries of weather would have sent it up onto the shore or back out to the sea. A small party scouted the land, and much to their amazement, found it cleared, developed, and abandoned. They found signs that something catastrophic had happened to the local peoples, including dried corn and meats in crumbling longhouses, and some hurriedly dug graves. They saw this as divine providence that God had cleared this land for them.
What had happened was a great plague had swept North America in the late 1500s, killing about 90% of the population on the continent. It is one of the worst human population die-offs in the history of the world. The common belief is that early whites brought smallpox and other diseases to the land, but that doesn’t hold up to native accounts from countless tribes, including those who never made contact with the whites. They all describe a fever, that is more like a severe virus or flu unique to the continent. No one ever reported the telltale boils of smallpox or the red rash of measles.
Fearful of establishing a colony in a lightly scouted area, the Pilgrims elected to stay on the Mayflower. The conditions were in a word, horrific, and that winter was extremely harsh. Shore excursions could find almost no game, and arriving in October, the growing season in New England had long passed. By March of 1621, only 53 passengers and half the crew were alive. Of those, most were very ill, suffering from scurvy, dysentery, and malnutrition. The Mayflower sailed back to England in April of 1621, taking with it water in its drinking casks instead of beer, which was the chosen drink (even for infants and children). The investors were angry when the Mayflower arrived on its return voyage, empty of any riches from the new land.
Weak, sick, and with little success, the colonists started building their village in Plymouth, under the watchful eye of the Wampanoag and Nauset. The great plague had left only 10% of the Wampanoag and a handful of Nauset as survivors. A debate raged on what to do with these visitors. The warriors advised chief Massasoit to kill them. They were weak, the track record of dealing with whites was bleak, and they could easily crush the colonists. Some debated to leave them alone. Let nature takes its path with the ill-prepared whites slowly dying off. They argued that most of the population was women and children and they appeared to have no understanding of the land.
Massasoit had other problems, enemies laid to the west in the Narraganset, and he had no way to defend his people. The settlers had iron tools, and he felt that an alliance could help protect his people, and they could trade for items. He also thought that it was the moral thing to do.
Much to the colonists’ shock on March 16, 1621, an Eastern Abenaki Native American named Samoset (also spelled Somerset) walked right into the Pilgrim settlement. He said in English, “Hello Englishmen!” He stayed for the night, asking for beer, and told the settlers that he would bring others. The next day they arrived seeking to trade with skins, but being a Sunday, the Pilgrims refused. On March 22, 1621, Samoset returned, with four warriors and Squanto, a Wampanoag.
Squanto is a complex character in this story. Captured along with Samoset by white traders, he was taken in as a slave in England, where he learned English and English customs. Listening to his captors, he discovered they were obsessed with a metal – gold. Squanto hatched a plan to get back home and escape, telling them he knew where gold was in the new world, and he could show them with the help of Samoset. An expedition went back to the northeast coast. At the first opportunity, Samoset and Squanto escaped, and no vast treasure was found.
Squanto and Samoset came back to North America to discover their nations were wiped out by disease, and their people viewing them with distrust. They had not suffered during the last decade, in the minds of the survivors of the plague, while the Wampanoag and Abenaki died. Squanto was never fully trusted for the rest of his days.
Enter the other character in this story, Edward Winslow. During that meeting on March 22, the Wampanoag demanded they receive a hostage before holding talks because they did not trust the whites. After some discussion, Edward Winslow was selected, volunteered, or was voluntold – depending on which account you follow. A peace treaty was negotiated. Squanto was left behind under the guise he would provide aid to the settlers. In reality, he was left behind to serve as a spy for Massasoit.
The story of Squanto teaching the Pilgrims to plant Indian Wheat (corn as we call it today), how to fertilize the soil with fish and lobsters, where and how to hunt the native animals, how to fish the native streams, and identify edible plants are all true. Had Squanto not helped the Pilgrims, the colony would have likely failed by the winter of 1621-22.
The exact date of the first Thanksgiving is not known, but it was in the fall or early winter of 1621. The Pilgrims were in a much better state through the help of Squanto, Massasoit, and the Wampanoag/Nauset. However, the story you were taught in school – not remotely true.
Sometime in the late fall or early winter, a large contingent of the surviving Wampanoag showed up at the Plymouth colony, about 90 to 100 people. The Pilgrims numbered 53 when they made landfall in March of 1621 and had dwindled to 47. So those paintings of lots of Pilgrims and a few Native Americans? Not true.
The Wampanoag brought with them, among other things, five killed deer. For the Pilgrims and English society in 1621, venison was like bring lobster, filet minion, veal chops, and toro sushi all at the same time to someone’s house. The Wampanoag said to paraphrase heavily, “we’re going to have a feast – here.“
The Pilgrims accepted the offer (not that there was much choice), and of course, provided their food to add to the feast. Wild turkey might have been on the menu, but the real food of choice for the first Thanksgiving was – venison. In an ironic twist, the feast went on for three days. The Puritans were against all forms of sin, and a three-day feast of food and alcohol check off the” gluttony” box. In addition, there are reports of gambling, trade, and exchange of stories.
So that is the real story of the first Thanksgiving.
As for celebrations after? They happened sporadically on years of a good harvest. The Wampanoag/Nauset enjoyed an increasingly shaky peace with the settlers until 1674 – just 53 years. By then, all of the surviving original Pilgrims had died. With it, the understanding of the incredible debt owed to the Wampanoag and Chief Massasoit. Boston had grown to the second-largest city in North America, behind New York.
Edward Winslow came to be a trusted friend of Massasoit. In 1623 Massasoit fell gravely ill, possibly from the same illness that killed most of the natives almost two decades earlier. Edward Winslow was sent for by Massasoit, as were other area chiefs, to sit with the sick leader and to be there for his passing. Edward Winslow personally nursed his friend, and Massasoit survived. A bond was formed in the longhouse that would last until Massasoit’s death. Sadly, it would be Massasoit’s son and Winslow’s son that would undo their hard work and lay the foundation for King Phillips War – more on that later.
Ships laden with more settlers arrived almost daily, and Edward Winslow’s son, Josiah, who became governor of the Plymouth Colony, held the native population in contempt. Metacomet, also known as Phillip by his baptized name, was Massasoit’s third son and became the leader of Wampanoag.
In 1671 Josiah humiliated Metacomet forcibly disarming him and his warriors and making them sign a very one-sided treaty. The Wampanoag became subjugated unless they would conscript themselves to “praying towns,” giving up their ways and following both the Christian God and the English ways in all aspects. To meet these requirements, increasing numbers of indigenous peoples moved into “praying towns.”
By 1674 rumors of war swept the land. Fear had grown so large that in December, over 300 Wampanoag and Nauset who were living in praying towns were rounded up. They brought men, women, and children to Deer Island in Boston Harbor. With no food, drinking water, shelter, or way to keep warm, the entire population froze to death.
In 1675, under the orders of Josiah Winslow, three Wampanoag were hung from a tree for the murder of a John Sasamon. No one knows how John died, whether it was murder, an accident, or suicide. Did he fall through the ice of Assawmpset Pond? The trial to this day is considered make-believe, and one of the hanged included a close friend of Metacomet.
In response, Metacomet declared an open guerrilla war on the colonists. Over the next three years, the bloodiest conflict in the continent’s history was fought, with over 10% of the settler population killed and entire towns wiped off the map. There was an open discussion about evacuating the colonies in the early stages of the war due to the ruthless violence of the Wampanoag and supporting tribes.
In the end, Metacoment’s family was murdered, which broke his spirit, and literally, broke him. Despite an offer from the governor of Rhode Island for sanctuary for him and the straggling survivors of his people, he allowed himself to be captured. Metacomet was tried, found guilty of treason, hung, quartered, and beheaded. His head was put on display and left for years. The Wampanoag and their supporters were eradicated. The rest is as they say…history.
[GREEN BAY, Wisc.] – (MTN) In three days, Aaron Rodger’s fall from grace has been spectacular. An NFL career that has spanned 17 years with the Green Bay Packers, with the first three years in the shadow of Brett Farve and his I’m retiring, no I’m not, yes I am drama. He is a three-time NFL MVP, Super Bowl XLV champion, and his entire career is with Green Bay. A lie about his COVID vaccination status, egregious breaches of NFL Covid-19 protocols, a positive test, and a deep fall into the disinformation rabbit hole has put the Packers and the NFL in a well-deserved hot seat.
On August 30, 2021 the NFL and the NFL Players Association agreed on updated COVID protocols for the 2021 regular season. Unvaccinated players are required to be tested daily regardless of schedule or status. They are not permitted to enter any facilities or interact with other team members until they know their test results. If an unvaccinated player was in close contact with a person who tested positive, they must isolate for five days.
On October 24, Green Bay played Washington, where Rodgers threw to Davante Adams seven times. The next day, Adams tested positive for Covid-19. By protocol, Rodgers should have immediately started a five-day quarantine. It is undeniable he was a close contact. Adams and Rodgers would have been in multiple huddles on the field, talked on the bench, and interacted in the locker room. The five-day quarantine rule would have made Rodgers ineligible to play on October 29. The Packers defeated the Arizona Cardinals in that game, who were undefeated before Thursday night. That win for the Packers could have playoff implications.
Additionally, Rodgers is required by NFL rules to wear a mask when indoors and during weight training. He has not worn a mask during media availability or by all reports in the clubhouse or locker room.
Rodgers lied on August 20 when he said he was immunized. Rodgers tried to get an exemption from vaccination after seeking alternative homeopathic treatment to boost his immune system, which the NFL denied. Green Bay knew he wasn’t vaccinated, and they broke protocol. When Rodgers should have been riding the pine, he took to the field. That’s called cheating.
Aaron Rodgers confirmed he's had the COVID-19 vaccine.
"Yeah I've been immunized." he said. "There's guys on the team that haven't been vaccinated and it's personal decision, not going to judge those guys."
In 2015 a different quarterback was embroiled in a cheating scandal. Tom Brady was accused of ordering New England Patriots staffers to lower the pressure in game balls because it allegedly gave him a better grip. Over two years, the NFL spent ridiculous amounts of money on an investigation that turned every armchair quarterback into experts on physics, the Ideal Gas Law, obscure NFL rules on the control, testing, and use of game balls, and federal law.
Brady’s use of footballs that were less than 1 PSI under regulation and the convenient destruction of a cellphone he was asked to retain ended with a four-game suspension at the start of the 2016 season.
In the end, Brady started playing again with the Patriots 3-1. He would go on to have an 11-1 record for the rest of the regular season. The Patriots would go to the Super Bowl, and Brady led the team to the most remarkable comeback in Super Bowl history. Down 28 – 3, Brady carved up the Atlanta Falcons for the first Super Bowl overtime game in history. The Patriots racked up 31 unanswered points and won 34-28.
It’s also worth pointing out that Rodgers appeared to defend Brady at the height of Deflategate in an offhand comment about how Rodgers liked playing with his balls overinflated. Ironically, just days before Covidgate broke, Rodgers talked with Phil Simms about Deflategate and how his comment was a “ridiculous narrative.”
Rodgers isn’t the first NFL player to say things some Americans would find controversial. Colin Kaepernick appeared to have a promising NFL career ahead of him. During his first full season in 2012, he led the 49ers to Super Bowl XLVII. Had he not played five snaps in 2011, he would have been the first rookie quarterback to make it to the big game in NFL history.
On his way to the Super Bowl, he squared off against Rodgers and the Packers in his first career playoff game – leading San Francisco to a 45 – 31 victory. He had endorsement deals, an intense rivalry between the Seahawks and 49ers started to take hold, and he was part of what many believed would be the next generation of elite quarterbacks.
Kaepernick’s 2015 season was a disaster. He fought with new head coach Jim Tomsula who lasted just one season. He was benched after seven games and then deactivated for the rest of the season due to a shoulder injury that required three surgeries. In February 2016, he wanted out of San Francisco.
In the lead-up to the start of the 2016 season, Kaepernick became increasingly socially engaged. In July, he posted on social media about the police shootings of Alton Sterling, Philandro Castile, and Charles Kinsey. At the third pre-season game of the year, reporter Steve Wyche noticed Kaepernick sitting on the bench instead of standing for the National Anthem. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football, and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder,” was Kaepernick’s reply.
No one had noticed Kaepernick had not taken to the field for the previous two games.
NFL player Nate Boyer, who played one game with the Seattle Seahawks and was a U.S. Army green beret with combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, gave Kaepernick advice. He told him privately it would be more respectful to kneel during the National Anthem, believing that Kaepernick could make his statement while showing respect to military veterans.
The backlash was ferocious and became fodder for the 2016 Presidential election. Pundits and politicians tore into Kaepernick, and by the end of the season, he was a free agent. He practiced with the Seattle Seahawks in 2017 to no avail. The local media response was swift and furious, and Kaepernick was excommunicated. Pete Carroll, the Seahawks head coach, would express regret in not signing Kaepernick to be Russell Wilson’s backup three years later.
The NFL would reach an “undisclosed settlement” with Kaepernick – rumors put the amount north of $20 million. In late November, the NFL set up a “workout” where teams could evaluate his readiness for a possible return to the field. Instead of holding the workout session on a traditional Tuesday, the NFL switched the schedule to Saturday, when most NFL teams prepare for Sunday games. The workout session was dismissed as a farce.
Kaepernick was canceled by a “mob” for following the advice of a combat veteran to protest injustice to Black Americans peacefully. The same people that canceled Kaepernick in 2016 would be screaming into social media during Black Lives Matter protests, “why can’t they just protest peacefully?”
People who follow the anti-vaccination movement have an expression for people who claim rules and scientific evidence are wronging them. The wails of injustice and outrage are called an “oppression kink.”
After discovering the “immunized” lie, the Packers’ cheating, the attempted cover-up, and then the positive test, the best course of action for Rodgers would have been to ride the socially distanced pine for ten days. Instead, Rodgers went on the Pat McAfee Show on Friday and self-destructed.
Rodgers insisted he isn’t “a anti-vax, flat-earther” but rather “a critical thinker.” He claimed he was a victim of a “woke mob” coming to cancel him, and he is the victim of a “witch hunt.” He compared his struggle and to those who don’t want to get vaccinated to the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and slain leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The choice of the words “woke mob” and the MLK comparison is stunning when you look through the lens of how pundits, politicians, players, and the NFL handled Colin Kaepernick. The NFL invested more money and scientific resources into the air pressure of 12 footballs in what New England Patriots fans still call a “witch hunt” than the NFL invested in investigating Aaron Rodgers’s holistic medicine “immunization” program.
While talking with McAfee, Rodgers would go on to say, “This idea that it’s a pandemic of the unvaccinated, it’s just a big total lie.”
Unvaccinated individuals are 11 times more likely to die of COVID. The unvaccinated have plunged Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado into crisis standards of care and brought Washington, Oregon, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida to the very brink earlier this year.
“If the vaccine is so great, then how come people are still getting COVID and spreading COVID and, unfortunately, dying of COVID,” Rodgers quipped.
No vaccination is 100% effective, and some vaccines work not by preventing an infection outright but by blunting the severity of infection to avoid hospitalization and death. The original polio vaccine, the influenza vaccine, and the pneumonia vaccine are examples of this. Fully vaccinated immunocompromised individuals for disease beyond COVID are still at risk for infection. Gen Xers who got the MMR vaccines have been advised to get a booster as data has shown the measles part of the MMR doesn’t provide a lifetime of protection. Breakthrough COVID infections are a tiny part of total hospitalizations and deaths in the United States.
Rodgers advocated for the use of Ivermectin and claimed he was taking it. Full stop. If Ivermectin was effective as a preventative, why did Rodgers get COVID? He then went full conspiracy theory, including expressing issues with potential infertility, claiming we lack knowledge or understanding of mRNA-based vaccines and praising Joe Rogan for his medical advice.
Tom Brady didn’t use his fame and a national platform to spread medical disinformation that is literally killing people. However, he was benched for four games for the crime of destroying a cell phone and playing half-a-game with deflated balls.
Colin Kaepernick never endangered his teammates, their families, or the people that interacted with him. Kaepernick took a knee for social justice and tried to educate America about racial inequality for Black Americans. Four years later, his former sponsors, the NFL, NFL Commissioner Rodger Goodell, and Pete Carroll of the Seattle Seahawks, couldn’t line up fast enough to go, “we were wrong, sorry.” He still isn’t playing football, and he almost certainly never will. For the sin of taking a knee, Kap was blackballed forever after taking the good-natured advice of a military veteran.
Aaron Rodgers has created a massive problem for the NFL. He has revealed himself as a person wrapped in conspiracy theories, an anti-vaxxer, and a person with an oppression kink. If he’s fined and suspended like Brady, he’ll cry witch hunt. If he’s drummed out of the NFL with still years left to play, he’ll cry it was the fault of a woke mob.
If the NFL does nothing, fans should cry foul. Rodgers broke the rules of the game. Green Bay and the coaching staff did not follow NFL rules and didn’t bench Rodgers on October 25. These are cold hard facts. There are established penalties for breaking these rules. At the bare minimum, the Packers and Rodgers need to face the consequences.
Rodgers sponsors will have to decide how they want to move forward on the issue of medical disinformation. Tonight his list of sponsors is one fewer, with Prevea Healthcare walking away for its relationship. Adidas, Panini, Bose, TaylorMade, State Farm, and Zenith have not made any statements at this time, but the public relations disaster hit on Friday afternoon.
The biggest irony of all might go back to Tom Brady. Brady is deep into the junk science of alkaline foods and aligned with nutritionist Alex Guerrero. His degree is from a school that lost accreditation three years after he graduated. Guerrero was sanctioned for claiming he is a doctor capable of curing AIDS, multiple sclerosis, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and Parkinson’s disease through his exclusive supplement Supreme Greens. Brady not only follows Guerrero’s program, he promotes and advocates it. His support of Guerrero’s junk science is considered a significant reason he ultimately left the New England Patriots.
Tom Brady is fully vaccinated.
Journalists, activists, and researchers defending the First Amendment
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