Dear Commons Community,

Jim Mattis

Dear Commons Community,

Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis slammed President Donald Trump’s response to nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd, writing yesterday in The Atlantic he had abused his power and sown division rather than working to unite outraged Americans. 

Mattis, who resigned as secretary of defense in December 2018 to protest Donald Trump’s Syria policy, has, ever since, kept studiously silent about Trump’s performance as president. But he has now broken his silence, writing an extraordinary broadside in which he denounces the president for dividing the nation, and accuses him of ordering the U.S. military to violate the constitutional rights of American citizens. This summary appeared in The Atlantic.

“I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled,” Mattis writes. “The words ‘Equal Justice Under Law’ are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation.” He goes on, “We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.”

“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us,” Mattis writes. “We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.”

He goes on to contrast the American ethos of unity with Nazi ideology. “Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that ‘The Nazi slogan for destroying us … was “Divide and Conquer.” Our American answer is “In Union there is Strength.”’ We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.”

Mattis’s dissatisfaction with Trump was no secret inside the Pentagon. But after his resignation, he argued publicly—and to great criticism—that it would be inappropriate and counterproductive for a former general, and a former Cabinet official, to criticize a sitting president. Doing so, he said, would threaten the apolitical nature of the military. When I interviewed him last year on this subject, he said, “When you leave an administration over clear policy differences, you need to give the people who are still there as much opportunity as possible to defend the country. They still have the responsibility of protecting this great big experiment of ours.” He did add, however: “There is a period in which I owe my silence. It’s not eternal. It’s not going to be forever.”

That period is now definitively over. Mattis reached the conclusion this past weekend that the American experiment is directly threatened by the actions of the president he once served. In his statement, Mattis makes it clear that the president’s response to the police killing of George Floyd, and the ensuing protests, triggered this public condemnation.

“When I joined the military, some 50 years ago,” he writes, “I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.”

He goes on to implicitly criticize the current secretary of defense, Mark Esper, and other senior officials as well. “We must reject any thinking of our cities as a ‘battlespace’ that our uniformed military is called upon to ‘dominate.’ At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict—a false conflict—between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part. Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them. 

Below is Mattis’ complete statement.

Tony

———————————————————————–

The Atlantic

James Mattis

June 3, 2020

In Union There Is Strength

I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words “Equal Justice Under Law” are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation.

When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.

We must reject any thinking of our cities as a “battlespace” that our uniformed military is called upon to “dominate.” At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict—a false conflict—between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part. Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.

James Madison wrote in Federalist 14 that “America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat.” We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose. And it starts by guaranteeing that all of us are equal before the law.

Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that “The Nazi slogan for destroying us…was ‘Divide and Conquer.’ Our American answer is ‘In Union there is Strength.’” We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.

Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.

We can come through this trying time stronger, and with a renewed sense of purpose and respect for one another. The pandemic has shown us that it is not only our troops who are willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of the community. Americans in hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, and elsewhere have put their lives on the line in order to serve their fellow citizens and their country. We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution. At the same time, we must remember Lincoln’s “better angels,” and listen to them, as we work to unite.

Only by adopting a new path—which means, in truth, returning to the original path of our founding ideals—will we again be a country admired and respected at home and abroad.

Dear Commons Community,

With the coronavirus still looming for the fall semester and probably beyond, some colleges are deciding to move programs online.  The Chronicle of Higher Education had a featured article yesterday describing how colleges are protecting their futures and limiting their risks by moving popular programs online permanently. Here is an excerpt.

“Like campuses across the country, the University of Colorado system is running short on time and money to prepare for the academic year. Now, faculty and staff trying to adjust to changes wrought by the coronavirus have something new to put on their agendas for the fall.

President Mark R. Kennedy announced last month that the system is moving forward with a plan to make its four campuses bigger players in online education in its region. The system, which includes the state’s flagship university in Boulder, enrolls just a small fraction of the students enrolled in online programs at colleges in the state.

But the plan will most likely not capture a significant share of the online college market in the near future, and in the short term the campuses are struggling with how to cut costs and prepare for a semester unlike any other they have encountered.

Numerous other colleges are trapped in a similar dilemma: whether and how to move ahead with long-term plans for an uncertain future while the demands of the immediate crisis eat up valuable time and money. In many cases, both long- and short-term plans include eliminating jobs and academic programs, such as a major restructuring announced by the University of Wisconsin system. But a few places, like the University of Colorado, are adding new online degrees with the hope of serving a student body that may not want or be able to return to campus in the fall.

Justin C. Ortagus, an assistant professor of higher education administration and policy at the University of Florida, said that offering high-quality online degrees is not a quick or inexpensive solution. “In the short-term most universities are battening down the hatches, and the University of Colorado is trying to build a new fleet of ships,” said Ortagus.

Kennedy, who was named president of the system a year ago, said there are costs for the plan, but a higher cost for not following through. “There are finite resources, no doubt, and finding these resources will not be easy,” he said. “But understanding the benefits will drive this. Covid makes it harder, but also makes it easier for people to understand why it’s important.”

An ‘Insurance Policy’

Online learning, long associated with for-profit colleges, is now widespread among both private nonprofit and public institutions. Nationwide, enrollment in online-degree programs has ballooned since the Great Recession, increasing nearly 60 percent from 2012 to 2017 at public four-year colleges, and more than 66 percent at private nonprofit institutions.

But there remain many campuses where online degrees constitute a small portion of a college’s offerings. The disruption caused by the coronavirus has convinced some that it is time for change.

Thomas College, for example, which enrolls about 1,000 students at its campus in central Maine, will start its first three fully-online master’s-degree programs, in business administration, criminal justice, and cybersecurity.

The college had already been planning to offer some programs online before this year, to serve working adults and others who wanted more flexibility. But the pandemic accelerated that process, said Thomas S. Edwards, the provost. Many of the college’s current graduate programs rely on hybrid models, said Edwards, so putting the programs online is not a major initiative.

Simmons University, too, will be offering its entire undergraduate catalog online this fall — about 350 courses just for the coming semester — as a sort of “insurance policy,” said Helen G. Drinan, president of the institution. There is little chance that the campus will be fully open, she said, so this will give students the ability to take all of their courses designed and delivered on the technology platform that the university uses for its graduate programs.

At the University of Colorado, the push to develop more online degrees may help the system attract new students or retain existing ones, but the motivation is more about catching up with the competition.

Nearly 86,000 students from across the nation enrolled in exclusively online-degree programs at Colorado institutions in 2018, according to a study completed by the consulting firm EY-Parthenon for the system. Less than 5 percent of those students are enrolled in online programs at one of the University of Colorado’s four campuses.

In comparison, Colorado State University Global enrolled nearly 12,500 students in fully online programs in 2018, according to federal data, more than double that for all of the University of Colorado campuses combined.

“If you look at just online degrees, we are trailing significantly Colorado State University,” said Jack Kroll, a member of the Board of Regents. “We’re not where we should be as the flagship for the state.”

For the coming fall semester, each campus will choose at least three degree programs to be marketed under the CU Online portal that is now serving only the Denver and Anschutz campuses. At the same time, a systemwide committee will consider ways to offer a broader range of programs for the fall of 2021 and beyond.

The digital education group, which had 15 employees at the Denver campus, has now expanded to 40 employees to assist with the online programs at all four campuses. Kennedy has said his office will cover the added costs of marketing, recruitment and enrollment for the programs.

While the degree programs being developed for fall are already online, the Office of Digital Education, another unit developed at the Denver campus, will assist faculty in further designing their courses for a high-quality student experience, said Sheana Bull, one of the leaders of the new initiative.

Long-Term Play

The question now is whether any of these efforts will provide enough financial success to make it worth the time and investment.

“To some extent the timing is right, because many classes may have to be online for the next six months,” said Robert Kelchen, an associate professor of higher education at Seton Hall University.

“Will it be a way to grow market share? That’s a different question,” Kelchen said. Colorado, in particular, “shouldn’t have delusions of grandeur that if they build the online enterprise everyone will come.”

The immediate challenges include the amount of time needed for staff and faculty to plan for enhanced online courses while also preparing for the demands of trying to open a campus in the fall.

“The vast majority of time and energy is being spent on whether it’s remotely safe to open at all in the fall,” said Drinan, at Simmons University. “We have an enormous challenge in front of us.”

At the University of Colorado, faculty members are worried that a centralized effort will water down the curriculum or cannibalize from the campus-based programs, said Mary Coussons-Read, a professor of psychology and the president of the faculty assembly at the Colorado Springs campus.

“This is a conversation and the intention is good,” Coussons-Read said. “My hope is that faculty will come to the table and make the best of a difficult situation for everyone, including administrators.”

The University of Colorado, too, must try to learn from its past efforts to increase online-degree programs. Since 2013 the Board of Regents has sought to push the campuses to collaborate in efforts to increase online degrees, said Stephen Ludwig, a former board member and one of the key proponents of those measures.

What undermined those initiatives was a lack of commitment from then-President Bruce Benson, too little cooperation between individual campuses and less-than-stellar management of the online programs, Ludwig said.

This time around, the system president is leading the charge, Kroll said.

Chancellors of the Colorado Springs and Boulder campuses, too, say they are on board with the president’s priorities, for now.

“Even though we are facing a pandemic, we need to build universities for the long run,” said Venkat Reddy, chancellor of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. “I look at this as a long-term play for us,” he said.

But the chancellors also want to make sure that developing and promoting the programs can be handled better by the system than on their individual campuses.

“It would have been possible to do this on our own,” said Phillip P. DiStefano, chancellor of the flagship campus in Boulder. The advantage of using the system is “bringing in other programs to attract a wider audience,” he said.

“What we want to see is how effective is the marketing of these courses and what’s the interest of the target population,” he said. “That will help us see how much of this we want to do in the future.”

I think this makes great sense and a smart move on the part of these institutions.

Tony

Steve King

Dear Commons Community,

Steve King, the white supremacist congressman from Iowa, was defeated in a Republican primary yesterday, bringing an end to the legislative career of one of Washington’s most explicit bigots. 

Former Iowa state Sen. Randy Feenstra defeated King to earn the GOP nomination for Iowa’s 4th Congressional District, according to The New York Times. A powerful coalition of GOP figures, fearing King was a political liability for the party, put money into boosting Feenstra’s campaign.  Feenstra will now face Democrat J.D. Scholten in the general election this November. 

“I am truly humbled by the outpouring of support over the past 17 months that made tonight possible and I thank Congressman King for his decades of public service,” Feenstra said in a statement Tuesday night. “As we turn to the General Election, I will remain focused on my plans to deliver results for the families, farmers and communities of Iowa. But first, we must make sure this seat doesn’t land in the hands of Nancy Pelosi and her liberal allies in Congress.” 

King spent nine terms in Congress and became notorious for his comments about Latinos, Muslims, Blacks and queer people. While a close ally and supporter of President Donald Trump, King had a falling out with the GOP rank-and-file last year after making remarks condoning white supremacy. 

“White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” King told The New York Times during a January interview about immigration. “Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?”

Republican leadership in the House took the extraordinary step of stripping King of his committee seats as punishment for the comments. 

In 2018, a series of reports by HuffPost and other news outlets exposed the depths of King’s white supremacy. 

HuffPost found that King had traveled to Austria and gave an in-person interview with a neo-fascist publication in which he discussed the “Great Replacement,” a white nationalist conspiracy theory. 

King also made headlines for repeatedly promoting neo-Nazis on Twitter and for endorsing a white nationalist candidate for mayor of Toronto. 

In November 2018, King eked out a general election victory against Scholten, the Democrat, by only 3 percentage points. King had routinely won reelection in his deeply conservative district by over 20 points. 

Good riddance to King!  He was a disgrace to the country!

Tony

Donald Trump holds a Bible as he visits St. John’s Church while peaceful demonstrators are tear-gassed

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday in the midst of a peaceful protest in Washington, D.C., President Trump decided to stage a photo-op at St. John’s Church after having given a “law and order’ statement about the riots going on in American cities.  It was a surreal moment as state militia shot teargas into the peaceful demonstrators so that Trump could walk across Lincoln Park to St. John’s Church.  Holding a bible, the hypocritical president who never goes to church, maybe was trying to show that God was on his side.  In response, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, the Rev. Mariann Budde  sharply criticized President Donald Trump and said that she was “outraged” by his visit.   As reported by the Associated Press.

“He took the symbols sacred to our tradition and stood in front of a house of prayer in full expectation that would be a celebratory moment,” Budde said in an interview after her statement on Trump’s visit was posted to the diocese’s Twitter account.

“There was nothing I could do but speak out against that,” she added, calling for a focus on “the deeper wounds of the country” amid ongoing demonstrations against racial injustice.

Budde said the church was “just completely caught off-guard” by the visit, with “no sense that this was a sacred space to be used for sacred purposes.” In order to facilitate Trump’s statement there, she said, she believed tear gas was used in the area between the White House and the church.

As protests nationwide flared following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, St. John’s suffered minor damage Sunday night from a fire in the church basement. Budde said “our suffering was minimal” compared with businesses that were destroyed by recent looting, even as she defended the goals of peaceful protesters responding to Floyd’s killing.

“We can rebuild the church. We can replace the furnishings of a nursery,” she said, referring to the damaged area. “We can’t bring a man’s life back.”

The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Michael Curry, issued his own statement saying that Trump had “used a church building and the Holy Bible for partisan political purposes.”

“This was done in a time of deep hurt and pain in our country, and his action did nothing to help us or to heal us,” added Curry, the first African American to hold that leadership post for U.S. Episcopalians.

The bishop, who last year joined other Washington National Cathedral leaders in a statement that excoriated Trump’s “racialized rhetoric,” firmly aligned her faith with the goals of peaceful protesters driven by Floyd’s death to decry systemic racism.

“In no way do we support the President’s incendiary response to a wounded, grieving nation,” Budde said in her statement. “In faithfulness to our Savior who lived a life of non-violence and sacrificial love, we align ourselves with those seeking justice for the death of George Floyd.”

Trump’s actions were a sacrilege to God and country!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The message below appeared on a Facebook page and was written by Shola Richards, an African-American.  I was made aware of it by my colleague, Patsy Moskal, from the University of Central Florida.

Tony

——————————————————-

Shola MRichards

May 28 at 8:58 PM

Twice a day, I walk my dog Ace around my neighborhood with one, or both, of my girls. I know that doesn’t seem noteworthy, but here’s something that I must admit:

I would be scared to death to take these walks without my girls and my dog. In fact, in the four years living in my house, I have never taken a walk around my neighborhood alone (and probably never will).

Sure, some of you may read that and think that I’m being melodramatic or that I’m “playing the race card” (I still have no clue what the hell means), but this is my reality.

When I’m walking down the street holding my young daughter’s hand and walking my sweet fluffy dog, I’m just a loving dad and pet owner taking a break from the joylessness of crisis homeschooling.

But without them by my side, almost instantly, I morph into a threat in the eyes of some white folks. Instead of being a loving dad to two little girls, unfortunately, all that some people can see is a 6’2” athletically-built black man in a cloth mask who is walking around in a place where he doesn’t belong (even though, I’m still the same guy who just wants to take a walk through his neighborhood). It’s equal parts exhausting and depressing to feel like I can’t walk around outside alone, for fear of being targeted.

If you’re surprised by this, don’t be. We live in a world where there is a sizable amount of people who actually believe that racism isn’t a thing, and that White Privilege is a made-up fantasy to be politically-correct. Yes, even despite George Floyd, Christian Cooper, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor (and countless other examples before them, and many to come afterward), some people still don’t seem to get it.

So, let me share some common sense points:

1) Having white privilege doesn’t mean that your life isn’t difficult, it simply means that your skin color isn’t one of the things contributing to your life difficulties. Case in point, if it never crossed your mind that you could have the cops called on you (or worse, killed) for simply bird watching then know that is a privilege that many black/brown people (myself included) don’t currently enjoy.

2) Responding to “Black Lives Matter” by saying “All Lives Matter” is insensitive, tone-deaf and dumb. All lives can’t matter until black lives matter.

3) Racism is very real, and please don’t delude yourself into thinking it’s limited to the fringes of the hardcore MAGA crowd. As Amy Cooper proved, it’s just as prevalent in liberal America as it is anywhere else.

4) While racism is real, reverse-racism is not. Please don’t use that term, ever.

5) In order for racism to get better, white allies are absolutely critical. If you’re white and you’ve read this far, hopefully you care enough to be one of those allies. Please continue to speak up (despite some of your friends and family rolling their eyes at you), because your voices matter to PoC now more than ever. Special shoutouts to my friends Becky, Catherine, Dory, Elizabeth, Greta, Jessica, Kayte, Kurt, Peter, Sharri, and Teri (and anyone else who I missed) for doing it so well.

6) And if you’re white, and you’re still choosing to stay silent about this, then I honestly don’t know what to say. If these atrocities won’t get you to speak up, then honestly, what will? Also, it’s worth asking, why be my friend? If you aren’t willing to take a stand against actions that could get me hurt or killed, it’s hard to believe that you ever cared about me in the first place.

As for me, I’ll continue to walk these streets holding my 8 year-old daughter’s hand, in hopes that she’ll continue to keep her daddy safe from harm.

I know that sounds backward, but that’s the world that we’re living in these days

Courtesy of USA Today

Dear Commons Community,

As we have watched the violence (see video above) escalate in our cities during protests over the death of George Floyd, local officials have begun to mention that outside agitators have been to blame.  In some cases, this may be true but the facts are murky. It is hard to imagine that burned-out buildings and destroyed police vehicles windows were caused only by outsiders.  If they were, who are these outsiders?  Yahoo News this morning has an article addressing this question.  Here is an excerpt.

“Have the countless fires, broken windows and vandalized police vehicles seen in cities across the country, from Minneapolis to Atlanta, New York and Washington, D.C., been caused by mostly white, far-left antifascists? Or was it the work of white supremacists or far-right antigovernment “Boogaloo Bois” trying to provoke a race war? 

At least in the Twin Cities, the epicenter of the protests, there was support for the idea that many, or even most, of the violence was committed by outsiders. At a press conference Saturday, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter said that everyone arrested in relation to civil unrest in his city Friday night had been from out of state, though a spokesman later admitted that claim was based on incomplete information. 

“The Mayor went with the information he had at the time and learned after the media conference more than half are from Minnesota,” communications director Peter Leggett told Yahoo News in an email. KARE 11, a local NBC News affiliate in Minneapolis, conducted a review of all arrested made by Minneapolis-based law enforcement agencies during the same time period for crimes related to rioting, burglary and unlawful assembly and found that “nearly all of the people arrested in likely connection to the riots live in Minneapolis or the metro area.”

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, however, was similarly insistent that those who’d caused destruction and damage over the last few nights were “not Minneapolis residents.” In a Twitter thread posted Saturday afternoon, Frey doubled down on this assertion, and echoed a claim made earlier by Minnesota Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington that initially peaceful protests were being co-opted by “white supremacists, members of organized crime, out of state instigators and possibly even foreign actors to destroy and destabilize our city and our region.” 

In response to a request for more details or evidence that the protests had been infiltrated by white supremacists and other outside actors, a spokesperson for the Minnesota Department of Public Safety told Yahoo News: “We are unable to provide additional information due to ongoing investigative activity.” 

A spokesperson for the U.S. Justice Department did not respond to a similar request for more information about allegations made Saturday by Attorney General William Barr, who stated that it was, in fact, “anarchic and … far-left extremist groups, using antifa-like tactics” who were responsible for causing the violence that had erupted out of many recent protests. 

Barr’s comments echoed claims promoted by President Trump on Twitter Saturday. Though Trump agreed with the Minnesota officials that the riots were the work of “organized groups” who “had little to do with the memory of George Floyd,” he was emphatic about who he believed the real perpetrators were. 

“It’s ANTIFA and the Radical Left,” he tweeted. “Don’t lay the blame on others!” 

Trump underscored the point on Sunday, tweeting that “The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization.” The authority to designate terrorist organizations lies not with the president, but the U.S. Department of State, and is legally applied to clearly established foreign entities, not loosely defined movements based in the United States.  

Trump’s view has been shared on Fox News and by various other right-wing voices on social media, who’ve been circulating photos and videos of white people dressed in black spray-painting buildings and vandalizing police cars.  

Antifa members typically wear black, including black face masks, when they take to the streets, but pictures of black-clad demonstrators in various cities proves nothing. 

But some African-American activists in Detroit and other cities have criticized white protesters for co-opting protests against police brutality with violent and destructive tactics that discredit the movement for justice. 

Cat Brooks, co-founder of the Oakland-based Anti Police-Terror Project, in an interview with the Guardian, drew a distinction between violence by African-Americans, which she saw as justifiable, and by whites. “If a black person decides ‘I’m going to set this building on fire’ … it’s self-determination,” she said. But she didn’t want “black and brown bodies funneled into jails based on white people’s actions.”  

Despite widespread claims on social media, little hard evidence has emerged of organized efforts by white supremacists or other far-right extremists to recruit or mobilize sympathizers to infiltrate protests. But a search of various social media platforms frequented by these movements indicated that the protests had drawn interest from some individuals and groups who are claiming to have joined the action. 

Conspicuous among them are factions of the so-called Boogaloo movement, a disparate collection of fringe groups with overlapping interests in a coming civil war in America. Proponents of “Boogaloo” have previously seized on other events, including the gun rights rally in Richmond, Va., earlier this year, where they see a potential for chaos and armed confrontation with law enforcement. 

While some white supremacists and neo-Nazis, are in fact, promoting the “Boogaloo,” J.J. MacNab, a fellow at the George Washington University Program on Extremism, cautioned that “the Boogaloo movement is not cohesive.” 

“While there are pockets of white supremacist Boogaloos, the younger and bigger groups are generally not,” MacNab wrote in a Twitter thread Saturday. Though some “Boogaloos” strongly support Trump, many others “hate him,” as well as the police. 

“While there are Boogaloos that want to discredit protests angry at the murder of a black man, there are younger Boogaloos that are incensed by the murder and want to join the protests,” wrote MacNab.

In a detailed report on this confusing and contradictory movement earlier this week, the independent investigative journalism site Bellingcat noted how the mounting protests sparked by the death of George Floyd were seen as a “call to arms” by some “Boogaloo Bois,” driven by their own animosity toward law enforcement. Public posts on Facebook and Instagram indicate that adherents have at least been present — and heavily armed — at recent protests in Minneapolis, Dallas and Philadelphia. One “Boogaloo”-affiliated Instagram account that has been posting and live streaming from the demonstrations in Dallas urged others on Friday to “Come out to support George Floyd tonight!” in a post on Instagram. “FYI I need 3 unarmed people to volunteer to walk among me and build relationships. We have the same goal as BLM: purify the corrupt justice system.”

While the stated goals of different “Boogaloo” factions may vary, they share a desire to bring about violent conflict, including armed clashes with law enforcement, that will ultimately lead to a civil war.

The spate of violent clashes between police and African-American activists have caught the attention of some of the more extreme white supremacist and neo-Nazi factions known as “accelerationists,” who specifically advocate for a race war that will end in an all-white society in the U.S. 

Public accelerationist channels typically known for promoting white supremacist and neo-Nazi propaganda have been flooded with photos, videos and police scanner feeds from the protests, interspersed with racist and inflammatory language.

“If someone really wanted to kick off the boogaloo, now would be the fine time to fire some shots and frame the crowd around you as responsible,” read one comment posted Thursday on the prominent neo-Nazi channel Terrorwave Refined. Another post from the same day, written in the style of a popular internet meme, displays the caption “Heading to Minneapolis to make sure it kicks off like” beneath a photo of a person wearing a black skeleton face mask and holding what appears to be a semi-automatic rifle above the caption. It’s unclear whether these kinds of posts have actually motivated anyone to join the protests, but they have certainly caught the attention of government and law enforcement officials in many parts of the country.”

Protests are a right in America.  Violence is not!

Tony