Trump indictment, military extremism, LGBT threat after Nashville

A Maryland man was arrested by the FBI for threatening to “slaughter” an LGBTQ organization in Washington, D.C. Extremist Trump supporters aren’t showing up to protest Trump’s arrest — yet. And the growing threat of extremism in the U.S. military.

It’s the week in extremism.

LGBTQ organization threatened

Why are drag shows being targeted?:A drag show, a protest and a line of guns: How the battle over one issue is tearing at America

Club Q attack ‘no surprise’:Club Q attack no surprise for extremism experts who saw looming threat, decades-old pattern

In the latest escalation in a growing wave of threats or violence against the LGTBQ community, a 34-year-old Maryland was arrested this week, after authorities alleged he left a threatening voice message at the Washington office of Human Rights Campaign, an organization that lobbies for LGBTQ rights.

According to an FBI criminal complaint, Adam Michael Nettina left a voicemail at HRC last week, saying, among other things, that he would “slaughter” the organization and “We’ll cut your throats. We’ll put a bullet in your head.”
The agent who wrote the Nettina complaint wrote that he believes the threat was in retaliation for the deadly shooting at a private Christian school in Nashville in late March. Police have said the shooter, who was killed in the attack, was transgender.
That news launched a new wave of disinformation from some right-wing sources, claiming – falsely – that trans people were at the root of a wave of mass shootings.
Threats and violence against trans people and the broader LGBTQ community have been growing in recent months, spurred by conservative pundits and politicians.
The HRC sent USA TODAY a statement: “As we see radical politicians sow hate and fear with anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, we have seen the physical threats to our community multiply.”
Go deeper: Understand how drag shows became the front line in America’s culture wars: Read this story.

Extremist Trump supporters staying home

The news cycle this week was dominated by the historic indictment of former President Donald Trump. But one group that has not been energized by Trump’s charges is the extremist far-right, which has long supported him. This week, we broke down why.

Extremist Trump supporters staying home:Four reasons extremist Trump supporters aren’t protesting his indictment – yet

Experts in extremism laid out four reasons why Trump’s extremist supporters are staying home:

Trump hasn’t told his supporters where or when to protest — unlike January 6, there’s no central focus for protests.
Some extremists no longer support Trump — The former president has fallen out of favor with some groups, primarily because of his perceived lack of support for those arrested for Jan. 6 crimes.
Extremists are still cowed from Jan. 6 prosecutions — More than 1,000 people have been charged with crimes, and that has had a huge impact on the movement.
Trump’s base believes he’ll beat the charges — They’re not calling him “Teflon Don” for nothing.

Extremist threat in military growing

A recent flurry of high-profile cases of extremists who are either former or current members of the military reflects a growing threat from extremism in the armed forces, a major story in the Military Times lays out this week.

White supremacists in the Navy, Marines:13 investigations, no court-martials: Here’s how the US Navy and Marine Corps quietly discharged white supremacists

2009 warning on military extremism:A 2009 warning about right-wing extremism was engulfed by politics. There are signs it’s happening again.

The current moment “feels like what this movement felt like in the lead-up and the immediate aftermath of Oklahoma City,” Amy Cooter a senior research fellow at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey told the Military Times, referring to the deadly bombing in 1995.
Jan. 6: At least 11 percent of the suspects charged in the Jan. 6 insurrection had military backgrounds. This week, a fifth active-duty service member was arrested.
Context: Extremism in the military is nothing new. As it became clear how many insurrectionists had military backgrounds, USA TODAY published a story looking at how the military suppressed an effort in 2009 to highlight the issue.
More context: We also published this story in 2021 examining the issue of extremists in the Navy and Marines who are quietly pushed out of the military with no blemish on their records.

Stat of the week: (About $88)

That, according to a (very unscientific) study by USA TODAY, is about how much money musician and Trump supporter Kid Rock spent on four cases of Bud Light he destroyed with a rifle in a viral video this week.

The video is one in a trend of such outbursts by conservatives over Anheuser-Busch, which owns Bud Light, featuring trans actor and TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney. Mulvaney recently partnered with Bud Light.

USA TODAY

Source link