Far-right influencers claim student protests are violent. Experts have different worries.
As protests calling for an end to Israel’s attack on Gaza flare up on campuses across the country, far-right personalities spent the week trying to convince their followers the protests were anything from a “Marxist takeover” to ”terrorism exploding in America.” Meanwhile, the officials who sent a document falsely certifying Donald Trump as the winner of the 2020 election in Arizona are indicted by a grand jury. And an internal investigation shows no bias from the FBI for investigating Catholic extremists.
It’s the week in extremism.
Far-right paints campus protests as terrorism
As protests broke out on college campuses across the country, influencers and politicians on the far-right began to portray the protestors as violent, dangerous and intent on taking over the country. The claims were similar to what happened after mostly peaceful protests against police brutality in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd.
Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, political organizer Charlie Kirk, and right-wing influencers Laura Loomer and Jack Posobiec all took to various social media channels, calling the protests “terrorism” and calling for a crackdown.
“Round them up and throw them off these campuses.” Taylor-Greene said.
“It is a cancer that hates America,” Loomer said of the protests.
“The only option now is to place all of the Ivy League under indefinite military occupation,” Posobiec posted.
Protests across the country began mostly peacefully, but many others have cited elements of the protests as antisemitic or expressed fears about threats toward Jewish students. Safety concerns have escalated on other campuses, leading to remote classes and a graduation ceremony cancelation.
Most protest organizers across the country have stressed to their followers that the protests should be non-violent.
Media coverage has reflected scores of arrests for trespassing and other minor crimes, and footage has been circulating online of clashes between police and protestors.
Joan Donovan, an assistant professor of journalism and emerging media studies at Boston University and an expert on the far-right, told USA TODAY the protest movement should also be very wary of far-right agitators trying to infiltrate protests, with the aim of undermining their messaging: “I will not be surprised when groups like that do infiltrate and try to amp up the violence,” Donovan said.
Those counter-protesters might, in turn, be met with violence from militant far-left activists aligned with the anti-fascist movement, said Colin P. Clarke, director of research at the Soufan Group, a global intelligence and security consultancy. The far-left has become increasingly organized over the last few years, in response to growing violence from the far-right, Clarke said, and he’s worried about possible violence that could spill out from the protests.
“I'm more concerned about the kind of onesies and twosies of people that say, ‘Politics aren't working, the system is broken — let's do something impetuous,” Clarke said. “‘Like, let's do something big, and let's film it and let's Instagram Live it.”
Inside the issue: Bosses at companies like Google are cracking down on Israel-Hamas war protesters
Fake electors for Trump indicted in Arizona
On Wednesday, a grand jury charged 11 Arizona Republicans and seven top aides to Donald Trump in a scheme to keep Trump in the White House by falsely certifying he won the state in 2020.
The 11 named fake electors include Tyler Bowyer, the chief operating officer at Turning Point USA, a Phoenix-based nonprofit with a similarly named political advocacy arm, and Nancy Cottle, who has served on the Arizona GOP Executive Committee and Maricopa County Republican Committee.
Two of the people indicted are sitting Arizona state legislators.
The indictment also lists seven more defendants whose names are redacted. As the Arizona Republic reported this week, those defendants likely include disgraced former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and former Trump aide Mark Meadows.
The nine-count indictment alleges the fake electors and Trump aides engaged in a conspiracy aimed at "preventing the lawful transfer of the presidency of the United States, keeping President Donald J. Trump in office against the will of Arizona voters, and depriving Arizona voters of their right to vote and have their votes counted."
The charges in Arizona come after similar charges over fake election certification against other groups in Michigan, Georgia and Nevada.
Internal review finds FBI report on Catholic extremists not biased
An internal investigation released late last week by the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General found there was no bias behind an FBI memo last year warning about threats from “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists in radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology.”
The confidential internal memo to House members, which was leaked last year, sparked outrage from conservatives when it was revealed. But investigators found “no evidence of malicious intent or an improper purpose,” in creating the document.
The investigation found analysts erred in “tradecraft standards” and “evinced errors in professional judgment” in crafting the memo, however.
“The F.B.I. has said numerous times that the intelligence product did not meet our exacting standards and was quickly removed from F.B.I. systems,” the FBI said in a statement. “We also have said there was no intent or actions taken to investigate Catholics or anyone based on religion.”
Statistic of the week: 44% of the time
That’s how often Jewish gamers in an online experiment faced harassment when gaming, according to a report released Thursday by the Anti-Defamation League.
The ADL has been tracking extremism and hate in online gaming for years, and has long found that all users encounter hate and extremism online. The new study specifically focused on Jewish gamers.
Researchers asked 11 participants to play three online games with the username Proud2BJewish. According to the report, 44% of their sessions resulted in some form of harassment, and between 25% and 41% of their gameplay resulted in harassment on the basis of identity.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Student protests violent, right-wing accounts claim
