Cult Smashers: Part Twenty-One

Silver O’Reilly had found a good source in the FBI who was feeding him information. The Bureau was usually pretty good at controlling leaks, which probably meant that the higher-ups wanted him to know about this stuff so he wouldn’t be surprised at future events. He couldn’t publish any of it without confirmation, and they knew he and his publisher were too professional to publish the story from “an anonymous source”. But they wanted O’Reilly to be able to publish first and “set the tone of reporting” once things became public knowledge. This was just one of the ways government bureaucrats were able to exert a little influence on the free press. But in this case it really did serve the public interest, so he wasn’t too upset about the obvious manipulation. Moreover, they didn’t know that he would pass on whatever he learned to the Elders—.

It was pretty explosive information. The FBI was committed to fighting a covert war against two far-right militias: the “Dancin Folz” and the “Smart Alecs”.

O’Reilly had vaguely heard about both groups. The Dancin Folz were a fixture at various protests and demonstrations---ranging from Black Lives Matter through union drives to Pride Parades. The membership generally came from what some people called “fly-over country” where right wing state governments had created a significant legal tolerance towards the public display of private weaponry. They wore bright floral-pattern shirts, semi-auto versions of military assault rifles, “tactical” vests, and hand guns. The word “dancing” in their name was a coded reference to a race war. And their armed presence was a show of force aimed at empowering fellow racists and intimidating minorities and their allies. The floral shirts were a sick---yet effective---joke aimed at ‘normalizing’ them in the eyes of the community.

The Smart Alecs were a more urban group that had been started by a media personality in Canada and spread to American “blue states” and urban settings. Generally, they filled the gap in Dancing Folz coverage because more restrictive state gun laws prevented their attendance in full armament. This didn’t mean that the Smart Alecs were any less dangerous as they’d been responsible for a fair number of vicious assaults with clubs and knives. Indeed, to even get beyond being just a “pledge” individual Smart Aleks had to prove that they’d been in an actually fight that drew blood with someone who could be at least loosely described as being “Antifa”. They’d been declared an actual terrorist organization in their home country, but were still thriving in America because the relevant statutes had been specifically written to make it hard to label any group espousing right-wing opinions “terrorist”.

The FBI had become quite concerned about how much the Dancin Folz and Smart Alecs had been involved in the January 6^th coup attempt. After some deep research, they became absolutely terrified when they found out how much support both groups had within municipal and state police forces, as well as prison guards. In some quarters it looked like front-line police were actively co-ordinating campaigns with these groups to stymie attempts at progressive organizing. One example that illustrated this problem was a Black Lives Matter protest where a teenager had brought a rifle where the police were letting the Dancin Folz act as unofficial help. Feeling empowered, the boy had gotten in over his head in a confrontation and shot several protesters dead. Because it was an open carry and stand your ground state, the child had been declared not guilty and had since become a darling of the right-wing talk circuit.

The Bureau was terrified about the collusion between municipal police and neo-facist organizations, because there was a direct parallel between this activity and the creation of the Brown Shirts in NAZI Germany and the Squadristi in Fascist Italy. Their theorists explained to the higher ups that the creation of private political militias is an unmistakable sign of a democracy at risk of being over-thrown by a dictatorship. The fact that local police were willing to turn a blind eye to this sort of activity showed that the rot had set in a lot deeper than they had believed possible.

While gathering as much information as possible, the FBI had also set up a secret task force plan for a “decapitation campaign” against these organizations. Until the January 6^th coup attempt, their hands had been tied by the Republicans in Congress, simply because the GOP considered any racist or authoritarian organizations to be “natural allies” in electoral politics. This alliance had been done mostly through dog whistles, winks, and, nods for decades---but during the Blunt presidency these attempts at camouflage were increasingly done away with as lawmakers contested with one another to show more subservience to “punkin head”. Now that Blunt was in prison, the Bureau felt it was safe to pursue the sort of ambitious disruptive campaigns that had previously been used against unions, socialists, native Americans, blacks, etc.

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Furthermore I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!