Police Report That White Supremacists Are Attacking Cell Phone Towers (thehill.com) 326
According to The Intercept, conspiracy theorists and far-right white supremacist groups are increasingly targeting cellphone towers and other critical infrastructure "to incite fear, disrupt essential services, and cause economic damage with the United States and abroad." The Hill summarizes the findings: In more than one case, they've succeeded in interrupting resources for law enforcement and emergency services personnel, according to the report [by the New York Police Department], which lists several recent cases. One involved a neo-Nazi chat group whose "members strongly supported exploiting civil unrest in the United States by attacking the country's infrastructure," The Intercept reported, while another was tied to the 5G conspiracy theory, which claims without evidence that the electromagnetic waves put out by 5G towers are harming peoples' immune systems and are responsible for the coronavirus pandemic.
The NYPD has not publicly commented on the report, which mentions attacks in other states as well, including a bombing in Nashville in December. The Intercept also obtained a document from the Department of Homeland Security that revealed three intelligence reports about vandals targeting cell towers in New York, West Virginia and Tennessee on the day of and before the insurrection on the United States Capitol in January.
The NYPD has not publicly commented on the report, which mentions attacks in other states as well, including a bombing in Nashville in December. The Intercept also obtained a document from the Department of Homeland Security that revealed three intelligence reports about vandals targeting cell towers in New York, West Virginia and Tennessee on the day of and before the insurrection on the United States Capitol in January.
interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
I would not be the least bit surprised to find Russia is actually showing these ppl what to do.
Re:interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
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I have to wonder, how much Russia is behind this? I would not be the least bit surprised to find Russia is actually showing these ppl what to do.
https://www.culteducation.com/... [culteducation.com]
The far right has been working with Russia in the past.
So there is case history.
While it is difficult to discern any philosophy from the groups falling off the end of the political spectrum, they seem to be accepting help from the adversaries of the USA. So having worked with Russia, political and communication and aid pathways may have been enacted.
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https://www.justsecurity.org/6... [justsecurity.org]
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What have the left go to do with any of this? The whole "woo the russians are breaking democracy" thing came out of the Democrats, a (barely) liberal party, not a left wing party.
For the most part the left has wanted nothing to do with that mess.
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It's actually more sensible for Russia to stir up the crackpots and set them loose rather than to *direct* them. We're not actually at war yet; it's the political effect of inflamed extremism Russia is after. Directly participating in a sabotage campaign is risk Russia needn't take that comes with consequences it does not want. Any nutjob can pick out a visible piece of infrastructure to attack, like 5G tower conspiracy theorists.
There's no doubt Russia is doing its best to stir up the nutjobs in Europe a
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Only one lot are insurrectionists. Only one are trying to destroy American democracy...
And it's not just the far right. The whole right is trying to stop people from voting. Because they know they will lose.
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You sound like a right-wing talk show host, in reverse. I'm not saying the parties are equivalent, but I am saying that approaching the subject without tact and nuance is exactly how you get people behaving irrationally in the first place.
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https://hereistheevidence.com/ [hereistheevidence.com].
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If you aren't responsible enough to be somewhere on a specific day, or have an ID that you need for basic daily tasks anyhow, then you need to grow the f- up before you start making decisions for everyo
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I send in my mail-in ballot every election. I track it every election to know when its been received and when its been signature verified and when its finally been counted. Why is photo ID required? If someone stole my ballot out of the mail I would see that it was stolen because I didn't receive it. We would then know the ballot is fraudulent which doesn't happen very often that's for sure because it takes an extraordinary amount of effort to steal enough ballots to make any impact and then its even easier
Re:interesting (Score:5, Funny)
the "Modern Right" is not known for its sense of humour.
Whereas the new lefties do get the joke, but have to look around the room first to see if it is acceptable to laugh.
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Re:interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
That is the "left" that progressives want. Stop stampeding to Venezuela and Trump's commie pals in North Korea. You just look stupid.
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They're talking about Canada. Finland. Belgium. Not some failed totalitarian petro-state like Venezuela.
Re:interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this the modern far left 2+2=5 math that lets you conclude that far right looks "FAR worse" compared to the far left?
Well given that this whole "2+2=5" seems to be a right wing fantasy about the evils of the left, it says more about the right than it does the left.
Communists just keep doing what Communists do in China right now.
China is Communist in the same way that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a democracy.
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Hard to run a country when your democratically elected socialist leaders keep getting killed by the CIA and replaced by the likes of Pinochet. Allende had a top to bottom plan for direct democracy, that linked cities and villages with factories and distribution networks, called Project Cybersyn. We killed him before he could implement it.
The only reason real socialism fails in the real world is that the US and the capitalist western powers will KILL anyone who tries it. Therefore, only brutal dictators surv
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Sure there are examples. Most of Europe does democratic socialism. Now, you may be tempted to say "But that's not really socialism." To which I would reply, "But that's what we want here'" And then it would be very disingenuous of you to try to say "But that's socialism!"
But that's exactly what a lot of people do.
And the thing is, this Cybersyn project fixed the one real issue with democratic socialism: the lack of price signals. You got that from the telecommunications network and user input. So, what othe
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Not that I think communism is a particularly good idea, but it's got nothing to do with any government that has called itself Communist.
Name a single "communist" country where *the people* own all the wealth of the nation equally. Go ahead, I'll wait. That's the central defining feature of communism - without that, no, you're not doing it right.
When the government owns everything, that's fascism, not communism. The only way you could remotely claim that was communism is if you could credibly claim that
Re:interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is that while communism is just an excuse for dictators, while white supremacy actually demands the oppression and murder of non-white people. Communism is an economic and political system, white supremacy is a philosophy that demands violence against others as a moral imperative.
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Let's see the metrics:
Dead: at least ten, probably twenty to fifty times more dead on the left. Enslavement: at least ten, probably closer to hundred times more enslaved on the left.
If we just want to stick with current events, then it's going to be tens of thousands of times differential. Communists just keep doing what Communists do in China right now. There are millions in gulags right now for being "born into a wrong race". Today.
Is this the modern far left 2+2=5 math that lets you conclude that far right looks "FAR worse" compared to the far left?
Gonna take it worldwide, eh?
Howbow we now compare it with the National Socialist fascist movement?
And before you try to claim that it was left wing because of it's name, remember that one of the linchpins of the fascist Axis powers was "The Big Lie", it's not remotely left, especially since Hister's main enemy was Communists.
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Alt-Q?
Q is a tool of the Clinton/Obama/Biden cartel, that was made to trick the most patriotic and intelligent Americans into believing that Trump - one of the most liberal and communist/socialist people to ever walk the earth - was on their side.
https://boingboing.net/2021/03... [boingboing.net]
But as stable geniuses, they are learning that they need a real leader.
Rumor tells it as either Mike Lindell, or Mister Bean.
If they merge, call it (Score:3, Funny)
5Q
Re:If they merge, call it (Score:5, Funny)
4Q has a nicer ring to it.
Why so fucking stupid, humans? Why? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Why so fucking stupid, humans? Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Humans have always been stupid. "Someone" has been stirring the pot VERY vigorously lately.
Whaaaaat! (Score:2)
Just a reminder (Score:3, Insightful)
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Ya know ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd pull out that old trope about, "if you don't like America, then you can leave," but I suspect these people wouldn't be happy anywhere where they weren't in charge and free to behave anyway they want. I also don't think there's anywhere else in the World that would put up with them this much...
Nashville wasn't The White Terror tho? (Score:3, Informative)
Modern Day Telegraph Poles (Score:2)
I remember back in the day a friend of mine in the Communist Party Of Great Britain* told me that his job "come the revolution" was to pop out and cut down some telephone wires.
* not the Communist Party Of Britain, those splitters [youtube.com]
Conspiracy (Score:2)
It's just a small part of them, they still want to stop 5G spreading viruses.
Hurrah for WiFi Calling! (Score:2)
Who knew it could be so useful in foiling my casserole-eating, right-wing nutjob neighbors!
The report doesn't actually say that. At all. (Score:2)
The basis for these assessments appears to be three whole cases of unidentified people vandalizing towers, pre-existing (and silly) fears about EMF, and c
Oh, for the love of ... (Score:2, Insightful)
... there statistically speaking next to no actual "white supremacists" in the US. It's a non-entity, when it comes to anything real.
Meanwhile, being non-white is a huge advantage in life, to the point that white people are being caught all the time now pretending to be non-white.
Being non-white is the "privileged" position now, and everyone knows this, but is not allowed to say it.
This is a bizarre fantasy world that you keep propagating.
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Re:Oh, for the love of ... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Statistically speaking"? Like the percentage of the country that's a white supremacist is small so we should ignore them?
Meanwhile, being non-white is a huge advantage in life...
Ah so that's why you don't see white supremacism as a problem, you're with them
Re:Starlink (Score:5, Informative)
But slashdot hates everything Elon touches.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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So instead of doing mild harm by attacking a cell tower, terrorists can do major harm by attacking a satellite downlink station.
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Shut up and finish Starlink.
Why, so they can be attacked by white dwarf supremacists bearing thermonuclear bombs?
Not made up. (Score:5, Informative)
If you actually check out the link to the article at The Intercept [theintercept.com] then you will see it has information from a Jan. 20, 2021, New York Police Department Intelligence Bureau report. Last I checked, the NYPD wasn't making up reports. It cites several different incidents regarding the damage and vandalism of cell towers in various states mere hours before the Jan 6th riot at the Capitol.
You can say, "sound like fake news" but you should do the bare minimum and actually take a look before making such a claim.
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"Last I checked, the NYPD wasn't making up reports"
You must have checked a very, very long time ago.
Re:Not made up. (Score:4, Insightful)
then you will see it has information from a Jan. 20, 2021, New York Police Department Intelligence Bureau report.
fact check: FALSE
The article contains no links to any NYPD resources. The article contains a statement that the NYPD has not commented on the "report." The article contains a link to an Intercept article. The Intercept article contains NO LINKS TO NYPD resources. The Intercept article contains a wall of text claiming to come from an NYPD resources and no evidence to support this claim.
Conclusion: this is a conspiracy theory with no factual basis for it.
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Only a fool would see a sudden spike in damaging cell towers and think, "well, I sure they been talking bunch about them 5G but it could been anybodies."
It doesn't take a master detective to idenitify the cause.
Re:Not made up. (Score:5, Informative)
Only a fool would see a sudden spike in damaging cell towers and think, "well, I sure they been talking bunch about them 5G but it could been anybodies."
It doesn't take a master detective to idenitify the cause.
Uh huh. Master detective? Let's take a look at the "rash of attacks" that are talked about in the Intercept piece:
The article talks about one incident in West Virginia on December 14th, one in Tennessee on December 19th, both of which were perpetrated by persons unknown.
It talks about a third (undated) case where a "neo-Nazi chat group" talked about attacks on bridges, railways and electrical grids, but does not say that any attacks actually occurred, much less any attacks on cell towers.
It also talks about a fourth incident in Nashville, Tennessee on December 25 by a person who "was not associated with any white supremacist group".
The article then relates another incident from last May, where some nut from Montana drove to California, posed as a communications worker, and "entered a restricted area". The suspect had content on social media that was "conspiratorial toward 5-G towers." No mention of white supremacy.
Finally, the article mentions a DHS report about "vandals targeting cell towers in New York, West Virginia, and Tennessee." (wanna bet the WV/TN incidents are the same ones reported earlier in the article?)
So, there are 7 (more likely 5) actual attacks reported in the piece, with the last one occurring almost 3 months ago - NONE of which are positively associated with "white supremacists". Yet the headline of this story is "Police Report That White Supremacists Are Attacking Cell Phone Towers".
Given what's actually reported in The Intercept/Hill articles, that headline is a flat out lie designed to troll the readership here. This story doesn't appear to have been submitted by a reader, so it looks like the troll is our dear editor BeauHD.
Thanks, Beau. You're a real class act.
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So your argument is that cell towers are of wrong colour?
Re:Not made up. (Score:4, Interesting)
Not like the police could have intelligence reports from the FBI or anything...
Re:Not made up. (Score:5, Informative)
I guess you missed this quote [theintercept.com]:
The [NYPD] Intelligence Bureau, which is responsible for gathering intelligence on terrorism and other criminal threats, blames these and similar attacks on individuals motivated by “extremist conspiracy theories aimed at fomenting a general distrust of government” and “racially/ethnically motivated violent extremists.” It stresses the threat of white supremacists to infrastructure in particular: “In recent months, white supremacist extremists, neo-Nazis, far-right Telegram groups, and online conspiracy theorists have all emphasized attacking valuable critical infrastructure targets.”
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Yeah, "blames", "increasingly", and so on and not a single proof, not even a clue that would link any single attack with any single white supremacist individual.
Someone vandalized a couple infrastructure points. We don't have a clue who, but it HAD to be white supremacists, because... uh, we don't like them?
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There's a 99.9% chance this story is complete bunk just like all the other media hoaxes of the last five years [substack.com].
Your proof is just restating what other news sources said and saying that it's all a liberal conspiracy.
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"So what you are saying" is that you work for the CIA and were paid to make this comment?
Jesus, what a troll. Obviously, there is no proof that this was done by some phantom white supremacists. If they knew who did this, they would have indicted them. And if the suspects were doing it for some "white supremacist" reasons, there would have been hate speech and RICO enhancements to the charges.
Not only was there no such indictment, but the police did not even comment on the article. So the fine headli
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So because there are two cases by unknown perpetrators that invalidates these instances?
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How does one go from "two cellphone towers were damaged by unknown perpetrators" to "far-right white supremacist groups are increasingly targeting cellphone towers and other critical infrastructure " ?
Re:[Citation Needed] (Score:5, Insightful)
To be truthful I've never been to a protest where people smashed their way into a building, armed and carrying flex cuffs, intent on kidnapping the people inside to hang them from the gallows the had constructed. Of course then I've never participated in a protest where the purpose was to install the guy who lost the election either.
Re: [Citation Needed] (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you ever listen to yourself?
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And who barricaded the doors of the police building in Detroit before setting it on fire in hopes of burning whoever was inside alive?
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Can you be more specific? Was this building actually burned down? Date? More exact location?
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Did you use Google like I told you?
Yes, I did. What I found said that an awning at the precinct was burned and that violence from both left wing and right wing demonstrators led to the situation being declared a riot. It does not sound like the event you're thinking of, which you clearly are not remembering very well.
If it helps to refresh your memory, maybe the event you are thinking of, which is the only one I know of where a police station was outright burned, was the abandoned police station. In that case, it had been abandoned after som
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Like most of the Right, they talk a big game but are mostly cowards. They assumed someone else would bring the guns, they would just bathe in the glory.
So which is it, are they the BIGGEST THREAT TO ALL THE THINGS..or do they just talk a big game but are mostly cowards? I can't keep up with the contradictory nonsense.
Re:They're just making shit up now lol (Score:5, Insightful)
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That white supremacists are capable of doing stupid shit? I think we learned that on Jan 6. But sure, I guess we shouldn't believe everything we hear from such far-left media outlets as... [glances at headline]... the NYPD.
Um, the NYPD is a government bureaucracy. I doubt that it's run by Republicans ...
That's by necessity - police have to be politically run, can't have them just running themselves. But they are political, especially when it comes to hot topics.
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If you go through to the source, they hide the good parts in images. Here are some quotes:
Reminds me of the South Park when the press was reporting millions dead after a hurricane, The number of white supremacists actually involved is apparently zero, but they are "asses
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So if the story is false then what is the goal of pushing it?
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You already believe it. The point of your post is to promote the idea.
I would say the goal of white supremacists is to raise racial tensions. Their actions are designed to get attention; to elevate themselves beyond "non-threat" status. If they can trick everyone into fearing and hating whites, they can increase their ranks with those most affected by this. The cycle continues until everyone is segregated by fear.
Re: They're just making shit up now lol (Score:2)
No, this is just garbage from the intercept.
Sadly it takes an overwhelming number of people to overcome the rating nonsense. Either people are retarded or slash-admins are manipulating comment ratings.
Re:They're just making shit up now lol (Score:4, Interesting)
"... like to play ... eat this stuff up ... his ilk ... these people ..."
Not sure what to call it but I'm weary of that kind of rhetorical move.
Still, I understand part of your sentiment.
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phantomfive and all the fake socialists who like to play revolutionary on the Internet.
I'm not a fake socialist. I'm a real communist. (Specifically the non-cohersive kind of communist that thinks forcing people to be communist is a bad idea, it should happen on its own as people mature).
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Re:They're just making shit up now lol (Score:5, Interesting)
No, I think that was just a comment on how truly pitiful your trolling is. SlashDot used to be home to some of the greatest trolls on the Internet, the current crop aren't even worth bothering with.
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Yeah, I've tried trolling old-school a bit here and there, but it's drowned out in the firehose of shit coming from the GP and his ilk. It's disappointing because that's an art that I think may be gone forever. It might be possible in smaller, quieter, likely more private communities, but even there all it takes is a couple of asshats to drown out any quality trolling with shitposting.
I think this is a direct reflection of the change in the underlying userbase of /. There was a time when it was mostly STEM
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Re:5G wacko now equals white supremacist? (Score:5, Funny)
We need better Venn diagrams to keep the nutjobs straight.
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Unfortunately it requires at least four dimensions, so they're really hard to draw.
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Re:5G wacko now equals white supremacist? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Let me just make this simple for all of those on the left. Are white supremacist attacking 5G towers? No, they are not.
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How about the people who attacked 159 UK 5G towers in 2020 - were they all white supremacists too? Or is there actually no real link between white supremacy and attacks on 5G towers?
But he's old, white, and from Nashville - I think it's safe to assume he's not a fan of diversity.
Prejudice | Definition of Prejudice by Merriam-Webster
a feeling of unfair dislike directed against an individual or a group because of some characteristic
I would never have imagined that a "fan of diversity" like yourself could be prejudiced, h33t l4x0r.
Re:5G wacko now equals white supremacist? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a lot of overlap between the two groups.
Think about it. If you are so gullible or prone to conspiratorial thinking then both "5G gives you COVID" and "Jews are trying to destroy your race" are probably going to seem convincing to you.
Look at QAnon. It's not uncommon for adherents to believe the 5G stuff or that COVID vaccines have chips in them and that masks reduce oxygen to your brain. That's not the core QAnon conspiracy, but once they go down that rabbit hole they have been identified as susceptible to bullshit and are targeted by many other groups.
Re: 5G wacko now equals white supremacist? (Score:2)
Are you implying that all old, white people from Nashville must be bigots?
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The horse-shoe theory is routinely disparaged, but I maintain it has some validity. For those not aware, the horse-shoe theory is that the extreme left and extreme right tend to take on similar characteristics. Given that, I'm not the least bit surprised that a granola muncher and a skinhead might bump into eachother while planning to destroy a 5G tower.
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The white supremacists treat 5G conspiracy nuts as Useful Idiots. They can direct them to do crimes on their behalf.
That's how a lot of these terrorists work, including groups like ISIS. Find someone they can get to act on their behalf, at little risk to themselves, and supply them with the knowledge and planning to carry out attacks.
Anti-vax is quickly becoming a thing on the right (Score:2)
in the US. It's a side-effect of the anti-maskers, crossed with several religious groups being anti-medicine in general.
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Pretty much this.
When it comes to disparaging claims strong evidence should be needed.
It's entirely possible it could be true in some instances, but without evidence we shouldn't pay any attention to it really.
Unfortunately sticking to what is actually known, rather than what can be supposed about people/opinion is less popular today and doesn't make for as dramatic of a headline.
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