I can’t imagine why the military might want to take a look at “white rage” and study up on extremism in the ranks:
When FBI agents in San Diego seized the cell phone of a suspected white supremacist last year, they discovered text messages with a Georgia sheriff’s deputy boasting of racial violence and preparations for a civil war.
The text message chain, called “Shadow Moses,” between San Diego plumber Grey Zamudio, 33, and 28-year-old Cody Griggers, a former Marine and sheriff’s deputy in Wilkinson County, revealed plans to steal explosives, dry runs with illegal silencers and boasts of racial violence. In one text, Griggers said he hoped law enforcement and the military would join their side in the coming conflict.
“Our only saving grace is that for the time being they have not brainwashed the military completely,” Griggers wrote, according to court records.
Griggers, who was a military policeman stationed in San Diego until his honorable discharge in 2017, said he wished he could “go ahead and fast-forward so I can enjoy the suffering of the abortion that is the American population.”
What a lovely fellow. He’s not unique, unfortunately.
Griggers’ involvement shines a light on the growing concern inside the intelligence community about the far-right radicalization of service members and law enforcement officers.
“They have valuable skills that extremists want,” said Seth Jones, senior vice president at the non-partisan think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Most of them have experiences with small unit tactics, operational security.” […]
According to a newly released study by the Program on Extremism at Georgia Washington University, of the more than 450 people arrested in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, 12% are current or former members of the armed services, a greater percentage than in the general population.
And the Defense Department has acknowledged that the FBI had open investigations on 143 current or former service members in 2020, half of which were for domestic extremist activity.[…]
The FBI described “Shadow Moses,” an apparent reference to the setting of the 1998 video game Metal Gear Solid, as a “prepper” group where Griggers, Zamudio and possibly others discussed building illegal weapons, acquiring explosives, and plotting potential attacks. It was also where they expressed their white supremacist and anti-Semitic beliefs.
In one exchange, Griggers wrote about getting police equipment and explosives in preparation for what he expected would be the racial and political violence to come. Other law enforcement officers could be brought to his side or attacked for “siding with the enemy.”
“I’m either positioned to maximize damage by attacking from the inside or coordinate efforts to safely identify ourselves as patriots in order to maximize weapons pointed towards the enemy and minimize friendly fire,” he wrote.
The FBI said Griggers spoke approvingly of the Holocaust, and when they raided Zamudio’s home, they found an anti-Semitic and racist novel well known among the radical right for its depiction of an apocalyptic race war. Griggers indulged in such fantasies where the assassination of “famous liberals” could be blamed on Muslims.
Griggers may not have been in the only Georgia member of the cell. In a message sent in April 2019 he wrote, “We made a .3000AAC suppressor the other day that I’m quite proud of.”
The message referred to making a silencer to suppress the noise made by a common military bullet, but the FBI noted the use of “we” in the text suggested a larger conspiracy. In the same message, he bragged he had recruited four people to the cell, which he called “shadmo east.”[…]
Sheriff Richard Chatman said there appears to be no correlation between Griggers’ claims of violence against minorities and time he spent as a sworn officer before being his arrest.
“He liked to talk a lot — a lot,” he said. “But nobody came up to me and said, ‘Sheriff, Griggers ain’t right.’”
The sheriff said Griggers gave no indication of his extremist views prior to his arrest. But Griggers wasn’t asked.
These are the guys Laura Ingraham says are conservative evangelicals. Sadly, she may be right. They are also violent white supremacists.
I don’t think there’s any doubt that there are some people in the police and military who are into this stuff. There’ probably always have been. But the support they are receiving from one of the major political parties with its propaganda machine and tens of millions of followers is something we’ve not seen before and it should scare the hell out of all of us.
There’s more on this story at the link. Is this guy just come yahoo with a big mouth and a lot of gun? Maybe. But I really don’t think it’s a good idea to make that assumption and excuse these grotesque beliefs as Fox News and the rest of the Right Wing Noise machine is doing, much less the political establishment. This will not end well.