Name: Years of impunity for right-wing extremists began with the Bundys and led to the failed Capitol Hill coup
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Years of impunity for right-wing extremists began with the Bundys and led to the failed Capitol Hill coup

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--Inmates (clockwise from top left) Ryan Bundy, Ammon Bundy, Brian Cavalier, Peter Santilli, Shawna Cox, Ryan Payne and Joseph O'Shaughnessy, limited-government activists who led an armed 41-day takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, are seen in a combination of police jail booking photos released by the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office in Portland, Oregon January 27, 2016. Multnomah County Sheriff's Office/Handout via ReutersThe Raw Story went to the Bundy occupation five years ago and warned the impunity would "blaze into another firestorm." That's exactly what happened on the US Capitol -- and could happen again.In January 2016 a led by Ammon and Ryan Bundy seized the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Eastern Oregon. For 41 days the two brothers used it as a base to carry out their fantasy of sparking a revolt against the U.S. government. They failed, but the impunity the Bundys enjoyed — before, during, and after their insurrection — proved to be a model and a source of inspiration for Trump's self-coup on January 6. The lesson of the Bundy occupation was white conservatives with guns could threaten violence to further their political goals and face minimal consequences. That led to the deadly unrest of the Trump era: Charlottesville, Portland, Proud Boys, and Atomwaffen. Despite this, conservative white extremists were still able to incite violence. Before January 6, there were so many attacks on state capitols , "how many times do they have to storm a capitol before it's taken seriously?"Armed hordes storming the Capitol finally shocked the feds into action, and they have . But the impunity remains. Just as the government went easy on the Bundys despite their blatant lawlessness, the government may go easy on a mob that wanted to put "" and came within a minute of carrying out their wish to "."Taking a bite out of violent white nationalism will fall to the incoming Biden administration. The last thing needed is new domestic terrorism laws that "will inevitably be used … against Black and brown people," . The government has plenty of powers to prosecute the extremists. While that won't end the threat of far-right terrorism, punishing insurrectionists with something to lose, the , , , , , , , , and and his , will isolate the most violent elements from broader public support.The road to insurrection began in Nevada where rancher and family patriarch Cliven Bundy launched an anti-government crusade in 2014. After decades of illegally grazing cattle on public land, Bundy was ordered to pay . Bundy, who boasts, "," refused and after , the government began seizing his 500 cattle. Bundy called for a "," and answered. The feds' tepid response backfired. Surrounded and outgunned, federal police retreated, returned the cattle, and allowed Bundy to continue his criminal activities. The right was galvanized, particularly by the on a highway overpass aiming his rifle at the feds. It was a model for the social media violence the right used to recruit new extremists during the Trump years. The sense of impunity the imagery conferred was likely why so many of the QAnon mob provided evidence of their guilt with selfies and videos inside the Capitol. Like the Bundys, like Trump, they thought documenting their crimes would allow them to get away with it.The Bundy standoff also foreshadowed Trump by drawing extremists with sympathies. Cliven Bundy, that Blacks "were better off as slaves," attracted the Three Percent militia, which off protesting at the deadly Neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville in 2017, and the Oath Keepers which promotes . were on the frontlines of the battle of the Capitol.Treated with kid gloves, the Bundy gang were emboldened to stoke more conflicts with the first Black president. Ryan Bundy led an illegal in May 2014, weeks after the feds stood down in Nevada. Then the Oathkeepers tried to turn a minor legal dispute over a gold mine in Southern Oregon into an . In August 2015, militias rallied at hoping to ignite another anti-government conflict.In the fall of 2015 Ammon and Ryan set their sights on Malheur. They arrived in Eastern Oregon championing two ranchers, Dwight and Steve Hammond, convicted of setting fires in Malheur. the local sheriff if he didn't stop the ranchers from being imprisoned, they would return with hundreds of armed men and "do the sheriff's job for him." One supporter talked of killing the sheriff. Despite the clear threat the Bundys posed, it's never been explained why they were allowed to operate freely, just as all the forewarnings of violence on Capitol Hill went unheeded. On January 2, 2016, the took the refuge unopposed. That impunity extended to the father-son ranchers who were little more than criminals. As at the time, the Hammonds had for decades allegedly destroyed Malheur's delicate ecosystem with cattle, damaged government vehicles and property, hunted animals by air in the refuge, and threatened to kill Fish and Wildlife employees and their families. . Nearly every occupier was armed, some with multiple guns, despite a prohibition of firearms. They used government equipment, buildings, and vehicles as if they were their own. They built fortifications that damaged "an archaeological site sacred to the ." By flaunting their lawlessness, the Bundys believed they could get away with it. Trump used the same playbook, planning his crimes in the open, culminating in the insurrection. The Bundys' plotted to ignite a sagebrush revolt against Washington. To that end they set up a shadow government with their own legislative and judicial bodies to displace the real one. The Bundy's cast included a self-appointed judge running secret grand juries to indict county commissioners and the sheriff and remove them from office. How they planned to do that without violence they couldn't say. When asked by reporters for the names of the grand jurors, the "judge" threatened to charge the reporters with felonies. When a reporter told Ryan Bundy, during a two-hour lecture on the Constitution conducted from inside his pick-up truck, "You want to overthrow the government," he went silent. It wasn't a secret. From the start of the occupation, the of wanting to "overthrow the county and federal government." They wanted to spark a revolution. Their followers knew it. But they never said it outright because their strategy was to pose for the cameras as homespun cowboys defending the flag and freedoms. And the media lapped it up. Trump used the same strategy on January 6. , "If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore." He never told the mob to storm the Capitol, so he can play innocent. But his followers knew exactly what he meant as in self-defense, "."In the name of freedom, the Bundys and the hundreds of malcontents who flocked to the nearby town of Burns terrorized local residents. Federal employees were stalked and eventually fled with their families. The Bundys showed up to town meetings and . Supporters drove around town waving guns and Confederate flags. Police disappeared from the streets and hunkered down in the courthouse behind concrete barriers and earthen berms used to fend off car bombers. This set a pattern for the Trump years. The Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer have invaded cities such as Portland, Washington, D.C., and Charlottesville, marching under the banner of freedom, while attacking and terrorizing locals with little police interference and few legal consequences. The feds ambushed the Bundys after 41 days, gunning down their spokesman LaVoy Finnicum. But they got away with it. Ammon and Ryan Bundy and five defendants were acquitted in 2016, days before Trump's election. The prosecution . They were accused of , , and the defense was allowed to sympathetic to the Bundy's weepy Western tale of rugged individualism. The Bundys caused and the bill for law enforcement was another $12 million. They agreed in principle — but not actuality, — to pay back $78,000 and were freed from further prosecution. To top it off, Cliven Bundy and his followers walked free after a judge threw their case out of court, citing flagrant by Department of Justice lawyers in Nevada. The Bundy acquittal was and forms a straight line to January 6. The danger for Biden is going easy on the Capitol Hill rioters as juries and judges will look on them sympathetically because they are conservative and white. Unless the punishment fits the crime of insurrection, the right will take it as a license to use more violence.Disturbingly, prosecutors are already raising the evidentiary bar far higher for MAGA rioters than against Black Lives Matter and anti-fascist protesters. After claiming insurrectionists were planning to "capture and assassinate" politicians, in court, saying, "There is no direct evidence at this point of kill-capture teams and assassination." Except the world can see and hear all the evidence of individuals vowing to kill elected officials, coming equipped with weapons and zip ties to do so, and fighting their way into the Capitol to do so. Compare that to of George Floyd protesters that is unprecedented in its harshness. It includes such absurdities as charging a defendant for a federal crime because the allegedly used to make a molotov cocktail came from Mexico and hauling defendants into federal court for trifling offenses such as "."The threat of violence will remain high as Trump and FOX News gain from stoking conflict, while the thousands of extremists he inspired will see violence as the answer now that they believe they are out of power. Unless the Biden White House acts decisively to douse the fire of right-wing terrorism, the next time it may consume us all.Report typos and corrections to: .After MAGA Republicans bristled at being described as "semi-fascist" by President Joe Biden, Donald Trump is complaining about fascists. "I just learned that the great and brilliant Ken Starr has, sadly, passed away," Trump posted to his Truth Social website. "He was a true American patriot who loved our country and the law.""I so appreciated his support and his thoughts that our cause against fascists and other mentally sick people in our country is just," Trump wrote.It was an interesting position from the former president who long complained about anti-fascists, a position shortened to antifa.One day before the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Trump argued that those who identify as antifa are part of a "terrorist organization."One day before the 2020 election, Trump was complaining about "the antifa anarchists, rioters and looters, who have caused so much harm and destruction in Democrat [sic] run cities."Less than a month before the 2020 election, Trump attempted to sic the FBI on antifa via his Twitter account."Get them FBI, and get them now!" Trump demanded.But Republicans have been frustrated since Biden branded the MAGA wing as "." and of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) have both complained about the phrase.Authorities rushed to respond on Tuesday after an explosion at a Boston university."One person was taken to the hospital Tuesday evening after a package delivered to a building at Northeastern University exploded when it was opened, school officials confirmed," NBC Boston . "Northeastern University said the package was delivered to Holmes Hall on Leon Street around 7 p.m. and detonated when a staff member opened it. That person suffered minor injuries and was taken to the hospital."The city's emergency medical services multiple units responded and one patient was taken to an area hospital.Boston's ABC affiliate Boston Police Department's bomb squad, Boston EMS and the Boston Fire Department were all on the scene."Emergency vehicles swarmed the area and a portion of the private university’s West Campus was blocked off by police. Alarm bells were sounding from several buildings," the Boston Globe reported. The newspaper the explosion happened in Holmes Hall, which it noted "houses several academic departments."On Tuesday, Polygon.com that Wizards of the Coast, the parent company behind the Dungeons &amp; Dragons tabletop role-playing game franchise, is suing for an injunction against a controversial competitor trying to reboot one of their properties with what they call "despicable," and "blatantly racist and transphobic" content."The request, made before a federal judge in Seattle on Thursday, aims to immediately halt the production of Star Frontiers New Genesis, a reboot of the classic tabletop role-playing game first published in 1982," reported Charlie Hall. "The target of the request for an injunction is TSR, an entity which Wizards bought in 1997.""The newly formulated TSR, Inc. is owned by budding game publisher Justin LaNasa," said the report. "He claims residence in North Carolina, where he’s best known for a chain of tattoo parlors — and also for a failed political campaign that was torpedoed by, among other things, reports that he once . LaNasa had been promoting his reboot of the original Star Frontiers for more than a year without actually producing much content. Then, in July, what appears to have been an early playtest version of the game leaked out. It was so reprehensible, according to Wizards, that the company felt compelled to take action to protect its brand."According to the lawsuit, LaNasa's reboot contains several controversial changes. Among them are the inclusion of a "sub-race" that has a low-capped intelligence stat and "latent issues" including with their "family," an explicit reference in the manuscript to the modern Black Lives Matter movement as "radical" and an explicit prohibition in the rules on any characters being transgender.ALSO IN THE NEWS: Wizards of the Coast has long faced controversy over their earlier material being racially problematic. For example, in a known as Queen of the Spiders, players encounter the Drow — a race of dark-skinned elves who were depicted as inherently evil, violent, and okay to massacre. However, the company made clear in its filing it has been working to correct this practice whenever it can.“Wizards has long embraced an inclusive culture for gaming, including for its Dungeons &amp; Dragons products,” said Wizards its court filing. “All players are welcome in Wizards’ games. In recent years, Wizards has redoubled its commitment to diversity and inclusion. For example, Wizards is updating its descriptions of people when reprinting older Dungeons &amp; Dragons products to remove racially insensitive material. It increasingly uses sensitivity readers and diversity experts in its creative process to ensure that its storytelling reflects its values.”&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Copyright © 2022 Raw Story Media, Inc. PO Box 21050, Washington, D.C. 20009 | | | For corrections or concerns, please email corrections@rawstory.com. | {{ post.roar_specific_data.api_data.analytics }}

--Inmates (clockwise from top left) Ryan Bundy, Ammon Bundy, Brian Cavalier, Peter Santilli, Shawna Cox, Ryan Payne and Joseph O'Shaughnessy, limited-government activists who led an armed 41-day takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, are seen in a combination of police jail booking photos released by the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office in Portland, Oregon January 27, 2016. Multnomah County Sheriff's Office/Handout via ReutersThe Raw Story went to the Bundy occupation five years ago and warned the impunity would "blaze into another firestorm." That's exactly what happened on the...

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The Raw Story (also stylized as RawStory) is an American online tabloid founded in 2004 by John K. Byrne. It covers current national and international political events and publishes its own editorials which tend to advocate for progressive positions. The Raw Story is a news site, bringing attention to stories that it sees as downplayed or ignored by other media outlets.

Years of impunity for right-wing extremists began with the Bundys and led to the failed Capitol Hill coup

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