That Hyperbolic White Nationalist Narrative About VA Gun Rights Rally Just Suffered a Death Blow

Earlier this month, the Virginia Citizens Defense League held its annual Lobby Day in Richmond. It was nothing out of the ordinary. They have it every year, except that instead of a couple thousand showing up, there were tens of thousands. You can thank Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam and the Democrats who want to enact Maryland-style gun control in the Old Dominion. It’s bad. The red flag law passed. The universal background check law is being debated as we speak. And the one-gun-a-month law is definitely coming back. This was a gathering of law-abiding Americans. No arrests were made. No violence erupted, but in the days leading up to the rally, you’d think a horde of Nazis were descending into Richmond. It was fake news. I mean you have some MSNBC host saying there was violence in the days prior to the rally. That’s just nonsense.

And because of three people on some messaging board threatened violence or whatnot, Northam declared a state of emergency and banned firearms from capitol grounds. This narrative was bolstered by the arrests of three neo-Nazis, one of which was an illegal alien from Canada, who supposedly threatened to cause trouble during the rally. Our own Julio Rosas was there. Nothing the liberal media had hoped would happen occurred. And now we know that these neo-Nazi arrests were quite unremarkable. The FBI was tracking these clowns for over a year, and they didn’t plan on attacking or even attending the rally. The Daily Caller has all the details:

The story of last week’s gun rights rally in Virginia was one of narrowly-avoided disaster, according to several mainstream outlets, with law enforcement stepping in just in the nick of time to prevent a mass shooting.
The FBI’s own court filings tell an entirely different story though, one in which white extremists stumbled from one surveillance trap to another without much situational awareness.
The New York Times, the Associated Press, and BuzzFeed narrative centered around the arrest of three men: William Bilbrough, Brian Lemley, and Canadian national Patrik Mathews–all members of the The Base, a white supremacist organization that interacts mostly online and aims to create a white ethno-state. The media implied the group was arrested while planning an attack at the Virginia rally, but that is not what law enforcement documents show.
Firstly, the group decided not to actually go to a rally. They also decided not to start any violence. They planned to wait for a race war to start, as voice recordings show, and then join in.
Records show that police were long in position to prevent these men from successfully attacking anyone. The FBI had been tracking their movements since September 2019 and installed video and audio recording devices inside their Delaware residence in December 2019, according to the FBI’s motion to detain the three men.

Now that I'm feeling better I'm gonna limber up the ol' writing muscles with a couple threads.

First off, on The Base: a lot of people are claiming something I'm pretty sure they're getting wrong: that the Base was stopped from committing a mass shooting at the Richmond rally.
— David Hines (@hradzka) January 22, 2020

Here's a Vox reporter saying it, linking an AP article implying it. Lots of activists are saying it. But while the Base are unquestionably dangerous extremists with a ideology centered on violence, if you read the court docs, you get something different.https://t.co/Zlgr4aCeNn
— David Hines (@hradzka) January 22, 2020

Before I get into the Virginia stuff, consider the Base's mission: they want to be a serious underground insurgent army. They have a colleague, a Canadian soldier *trained in explosives,* illegally coming over the border to them. Ready?

Check this tradecraft. pic.twitter.com/LPHQR794vn
— David Hines (@hradzka) January 22, 2020

now it turns out that there appears to be a ridiculously detailed amount of information about what the guys from the Maryland cell said about Virginia when because

a) the Base was infiltrated by journos
b) and then by undercover FBI
c) and then...
— David Hines (@hradzka) January 22, 2020

This sounds, in fact, a lot like conspiracy theorists listening to conspiracy theorist chatter that THIS IS A TRAP AND A SET-UP AND THINGS WILL GO BADLY.

Note that they're talking here about building from the chaos they expect at the Richmond rally -- not causing it.
— David Hines (@hradzka) January 22, 2020

You will note what is coming off here is not so much a violent plan but a faith of violence: They are convinced the rally goers are almost as radical as they are, and just need a push... but don't know how, any more than they know how to make Hard Lefties to escalate violence.
— David Hines (@hradzka) January 22, 2020

This may be the most laughable part of the surveillance reported. The Base is murder-minded and dangerous. They are also stupid and pathetic.

This is the white nationalist equivalent of a little kid playing Batman, or a high school nerd fantasizing about fucking the cheerleader. pic.twitter.com/NbPKrN2quB
— David Hines (@hradzka) January 22, 2020

You'll notice that's not even a part of an actionable plan. It's a fantasy where they get to murder people they hate while playing nick-of-time hero. There's no work involved. No before, no after. The moment of glory comes to them.

It's bizarrely childish.
— David Hines (@hradzka) January 22, 2020

Spoiler: the Base did not get to make their camping trip, because, remember, they were an FBI reality show.

And so they were arrested, but not before adding one of the great white nationalist quotes of all time to the pantheon.

"I CANNOT TRUST YOU TO KEEP MY MURDERING SECRETS." pic.twitter.com/cbTh7ibKeH
— David Hines (@hradzka) January 22, 2020

Yeah, so that narrative is dead. Killed by a headshot. And something that shouldn’t have been taken that seriously, to begin with. Of course, neo-Nazi trash is around and will say nutty things on their platforms that are followed by two or three people. The media makes them out to be larger than they are, and the state’s blackface-wearing governor just decided to use these three stooges to curb the rights of protesters on VCDL’s lobby day. It speaks more to how Northam and the Democratic Party view gun owners, supporters of the Second Amendment, and Republicans in general. They hate us.