The take down of those nutcases up in Michigan yesterday provided an obscure but interesting link to a Louisiana congressman, a link that LouisianaVoice first revealed more than three months ago, back on June 26.
In case you’ve been in a coma or living under a rock, six men have been charged in federal court with conspiracy to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and seven other men are facing separate state terrorism charges for their involvement with the Wolverine Watchmen, a militia group affiliated with the Boogaloo movement.
NBC News said Adam Fox, Barry Croft, Ty Garbin, Kaleb Franks, Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta were charged with conspiracy to commit kidnapping. In a recent social profile verified by date of birth, Croft wore a tricorn hat and a sweatshirt with the insignia of the Three Percenters (emphasis mine), an armed anti-government movement.
The Three Percenters, founded in 2008 following the election of Barack Obama as president, draws its name from the unsubstantiated assertion that only 3 percent of American colonists actually fought the British during the American Revolution.
If they are striving for 3 percent of America for its membership numbers, that would appear to be a bit ambitious. If they represented 3 percent of the U.S. population today, they would number nearly 10 million members instead of fewer than 100,000 suspected members of such militia groups scattered throughout the U.S.
Other similar organizations are the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, Patriot Prayer and at least seven Louisiana organizations identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as hate groups.
And while Donald Trump insists that all violence, rioting and looting is the handiwork of liberals and antifa, the latest arrests should dampen that rhetoric somewhat. But then there is also this:
- Oath Keeper Charles Dyer was sentenced to 30 years in prison for raping his own 7-year-old daughter.
- The president of a local Ohio chapter was jailed for keeping a live napalm bomb in his home.
- An armed Tennessee man driving a pickup truck with an Oath Keepers logo on it was arrested when he attempted to place two dozen officials in a town under arrest, a-la Gomer Pyle.
- In March 2018, Michael B. Hari, a former sheriff’s deputy who once submitted a proposal to build Donald Trump’s wall on the southern US border, was one of three men arrested in connection with the bombing of a mosque in Minnesota. Hari at the time headed up a group called the White Rabbit Three Percent Illinois Patriot Freedom Fighters Militia.
- Three Percenters have served as self-appointed, heavily-armed “border patrols, attempted to detonate a car bomb outside a bank in Oklahoma City in 2017, and served as self-appointed security during the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that turned deadly in August 2017.
In June, LouisianaVoice published a story that showed an affiliation between the Three Percenters and Livingston Parish’s CAJUN GUARD.
In March 2018, it turns out, U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana’s 3rd Congressional District hinted to representatives of the oil and gas industry that he was a MEMBER of the 3 Percenters.
“Some of you know, some of you perhaps do not, that the Revolutionary soldiers that gave birth to this nation represented only three percent of the populace, the colonists,” he erroneously told attendees at the Expanding Global Gas Infrastructure seminar. “Some of us refer to ourselves as ‘Three Percenters,” he added (emphasis mine).
While it was not immediately clear whether Higgins really counted himself as an active member of any Three Percenter chapter, he has done little to dispel any such notion. He would again be linked to the organization two months later when he hawked T-shirts with what appeared to be a Three Percenter logo on the backs.
The shirts were distributed to participants in a “Redemption Ride,” a jeep and motorcycle ride with Higgins and Dog the Bounty Hunter. Online payments for the shirts were processed as individual contributions to Higgins’s congressional campaign.
The link to that online store, which sold clothing and accessories in preparation for the civil war that some members appear to anticipate – and relish – has since been taken down.
Higgins, by the way, is up for reelection on Nov. 3. A vote for him could be perceived as an endorsement of the planned kidnapping of the governor of Michigan. You have to ask yourself the following questions:
- Is this really what America stands for?
- Is the darkness that has swept over this country productive?
- Is this what I really want for my children and grandchildren?
- When will the madness that has permeated this country end?
- Is violence and insurrection the answer?
- What can I do to end the vitriol?
Answer: you can vote.
I can’t tell you how to vote – and I wouldn’t – because that’s in your own heart and while I may not agree with your choice, it’s your right to make it.
But if you don’t vote, you have no right to complain about any aspect of our government.
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