The Hutaree and MSNBC Militias

Over the weekend in Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio, eight men of the “Hutaree Militia” were arrested (a ninth turned himself in Monday), and all have been charged with “seditious conspiracy,” “attempting to use weapons of mass destruction,” and firearms violations. Two of the nine are charged with “instructing” others how to make bombs. The indictment [.pdf] charges that these member of the so-called Hutaree Militia had plans to lure cops into various ambushes in furtherance of their plan for war against the Antichrist.

All the rest of the Michigan militias are telling the press that they had nothing to do with the accused, having long considered them trouble, and they reportedly even refused some of the Hutarees sanctuary once the arrests began.

A safe first guess on a case like this is that the Feds have just made up another one. The formula is always the same for them: Find a person or a small group of people who are gullible and bordering on criminal, then trick them into saying, or sometimes even doing, something stupid and/or evil. See for example the Miami 7, the Detroit 5, the Lodi 1, the NY 2, the NY 4

In this case it seems that the self-proclaimed militia leader and his son somehow joined up with a very strange character named Khristopher Sickels and a few others and planned to make IEDs and use them against local police.

The funny part is, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reported Monday, “The FBI had infiltrated the group for several months,” attributing this information to Detroit News 4, though the closest thing this writer can find to that on their Web site is the assertion that “federal authorities had been monitoring the Hutaree members for some time.”

I’m betting Maddow’s interpretation that they had actually been infiltrated is accurate and that the worst of whatever these people actually did was at the urging of said federal agent.

(By the way, does “weapons of mass destruction” have a definition at all these days? It started out as a cute way for the empire to conflate mustard gas with hydrogen bombs, but now rifles and homemade land mines – at least in the hands of non-U.S. government employees – are included as well.)

Maddow, as Lew Rockwell pointed out on Monday, was beside herself with glee at the prospect of these citizens being tried by the federal government for “seditious conspiracy,” which, as she put it, is an “obscure 19th-century law” which allows the national government to imprison people who haven’t actually done anything. Wow, that really is “interesting.”

And if you stay tuned for the next segment, you can watch Maddow push her expert guest to conflate everyone to the right of her into the imminent threat of the right-wing populist, Patriot, neo-Nazi, End Timeser, abortion-doctor killer, Republican, Tea Party Armed Insurrection of Danger! He refused, but this Maddow lady is only getting started. Just wait till she becomes director-for-life of the New National Homeland FEMA Camp, Northern Command. We’ll all be seditious terrorist-hate-crime-enemy-belligerents.

You’ll wish you’d joined a militia then.

But anyway…

Over at the Reason blog Brian Doherty caught more liberals cheering on the police state and recommended a great article, “The Paranoid Center,” by Jesse Walker. And at LRC, Anthony Gregory asks why Maddow left out the role of end times beliefs in mass support for the government’s aggressive foreign policy in the Middle East.

Update: See, the FBI orchestrated the whole thing. They had infiltrated the group for at least 8 months, and it was their guy who was offering explosives expertise, etc. Long live the right to confront one’s accusers.

Author: Scott Horton

Scott Horton is editorial director of Antiwar.com, director of the Libertarian Institute, host of Antiwar Radio on Pacifica, 90.7 FM KPFK in Los Angeles, California and podcasts the Scott Horton Show from ScottHorton.org. He’s the author of the 2017 book, Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan and editor of The Great Ron Paul: The Scott Horton Show Interviews 2004–2019. He’s conducted more than 5,000 interviews since 2003. Scott lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, investigative reporter Larisa Alexandrovna Horton. He is a fan of, but no relation to the lawyer from Harper’s. Scott’s Twitter, YouTube, Patreon.

4 thoughts on “The Hutaree and MSNBC Militias”

  1. >> lure cops into various ambushes in furtherance of their plan for war against the Antichrist>> lure cops into various ambushes in furtherance of their plan for war against the Antichrist

    How does that work then?

    Well, we shall see what comes out of this. At least it's not "John Doe 2" – murky and nobody died. So facts can be had.

  2. "At LRC, Anthony Gregory asks why Maddow left out the role of end times beliefs in mass support for the government’s aggressive foreign policy in the Middle East."

    I've wondered why nearly EVERY journalist, right, left or off-the-wall, ignores the influence of the Armeggedonites on US foreign policy. I suspect the reason is that journalists of whatever tribe/tongue/people/nation are secularists (often fleeing a fundy up-bringing) and just don't want to think about Daniel, Revelation, First Enoch, or interpretations of Hal Lindsey and innumerable other annoying preachers. I understand that; I feel the same way about Marxism. But Marxism has been important in the last 100 years, whether I like it or not, and Dispensationalism has been more important in the US than Marxism has ever been.

    As more and more Armeggedonites lose hope that the Rapture will pay off their maxed out credit cards, etc., more and more will look for scapegoats to blame and punish. Probably the next generation will not be a good time to be a Muslim or a minority of any sort.

  3. The media like certain Armaggedonites…like Katharine Albrecht who thinks RFID is leading to the Mark of the Beast….yet she's the go-to gal for all of mainstream media on the subject.

    1. Surely you've noticed that the Armeggedonites are all over the media? That they fill TV and radio? They're not rare on the Internet, either.

    2. Well, last time I renewed my passport, I was glad it did not have the RFID chip, telling all and sundry "I'm a rich American! Come and kidnap me!" I was wondering if I could get away with "forgetting" to take it out of my pocket when I threw my jeans in the washer. Defacing a draft card was a felony in the Viet Nam era, you know.

  4. Every few months the federales just have to scare the shiite outta the Sheeple.

    Anything to draw attention away from nearly depression level unemployment and a dying empire, and make it more likely that the AmeroConned Sheeple will run to their government masters in times of crisis, no matter how contrived or absurd.

  5. Why anyone takes the "talking heads" seriously is reason enough to doubt their intelligence. The matter, with regards to the ooga-booga militia, is immediately suspect. No less a set up than what we've witnessed before with the purported "terr…isssts". Most likely infiltrated and goaded to "do something" by the very people who turn them in. And for what purpose? That's what really gets me… that folks are skillfully railroaded into doing stupid things and then framed by our imaginary defenders! Are they that desperate for enemies that they have to create them out of whole cloth? Agents Provocateur, indeed.

  6. Well, if you have no lead on who actually cut the gas line on a propane stove, fired shots into Congressional offices, or threw bricks through windows, it's pretty important to show you're doing SOMETHING about the situation. I'm sure the FBI didn't need Rachel to tell them to DO SOMETHING when their own self-interest dictates it. What I don't understand is why nobody is prosecuting the idiot who's been encouraging the brick-throwing on blogs. Incitement to riot?

  7. People have been stirred into rage by the government's betrayal of them, under both parties, and that rage is being channeled into right wing hate because of the servile obeisance of the Left to Obama and the Liberals, who yes, by the way, HAVE chosen to celebrate with absolute glee the destruction of civil rights of the right, as you know.

  8. Maddow is a liberal fascist. I knew this back in 2008, when she praised Corporatist Fascist New York Mayor Bloomberg, the one responsible for the police state tactics used by NYC against demonstrators during the 2004 RNC. To her credit, she has had a few moments of integrity, but she's no Glenn Greenwald.

    But we need to understand that Liberalism is not the same as Leftism or even Progressivism (which sort of lies between Liberalism and Leftism). Liberalism is a 19th century political movement, concocted by the upper bourgeoisie, as a way to advance their interests. It has nothing to do with the love for community and the altruism that it is associated with today, which is why the policies of the Liberal Party, the Dems, and the Liberal talking heads have nothing to do with such things.

    Still, Maddow is right about one thing. Seditious Conspiracy is not a crime, not in a free society. Of course, as we all know by now (though most of us continue to refuse to admit it), the US is in fact a police state. But the fact that seditious conspiracy is prominent on the indictment is a telling sign that the whole indictment is almost certainly mostly bogus. This is almost certainly yet another case of entrapment by the Feds, politically motivated entrapment. The articles about the arrest that I read were fascinating. They were mostly just outrageous smears, with almost no detail about the actual charges and arrests. The gist was 'these are crazy, bad people so no doubt they are totally guilty'.

    If the arrests stopped an actual planned attack that wasn't provoked by some agent provocateur, that's fantastic. But is that what happened here? And does anyone even care? Remember, the Libs didn't give a damn about Lefties similarly arrested, such as the St. Paul 8, or about police state tactics under Obama in Pittsburgh during the g20. But they are positively gleeful about these right wing arrests, and have shown no concern whatsoever about questions of actual guilt. No person with a shred of integrity can observe the stories about these arrests, especially in the context of past federal operations, without wondering if the indictments and arrests are legit. Yet virtually no Lib that i've seen has paid more than the most cursory attention to such concerns.

    When they came for the right wing, I laughed and pointed.
    When they came for me and my friends, there was no one to care.

  9. First, Muslims; next, maybe you

    In Orange County, the FBI used a convicted con artist as an informant who inserted himself into local mosques and recorded conversations with mosque-goers about potentially blowing up buildings. Although the agency wouldn't confirm the man's identity, it did acknowledge that he was recording people within mosques. A man named Craig Monteilh says he was the informant and he says he went by the name Farouk al-Aziz. As the Register reported, Monteilh is accused of going from one young Muslim to another, trying to engage them in radical talk. Some mosque-goers contacted the FBI to report on this seeming radical in their midst, but according to the local Council of American-Islamic Relations, these men who made complaints then became the subject of FBI scrutiny.

    http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/fbi-22469-repor

  10. Most Americans are willing to give liberty in exchange of false sense of security, which Feds are more than willing and able to deliver. And in order to get the American public to give up freedom little by little, the feds have to keep on "uncovering (manufacturing) new terrorist plots” now and then. Most of these so-called terrorist plots had one thing in common. The feds find individuals who have mental, financial, or legal problems and pressure them to become informants, Agents Provocateur, with promises of help and financial rewards. If they refuse, they will make their life extremely difficult.

    "The FBI has sent "agents provocateur" into California mosques, according to the statement, which says an FBI agent threatened to make one mosque member's life a "living hell" if he did not become an informant.'
    http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/03/20/fbi.muslim.group

  11. Seems eerily reminiscent of horror that happened maybe not so long ago. Round up "those icky people" but not "those icky people" and before you know it the 'round ups' are done and all the 'icky' folk are consigned to camps and done is done.

  12. Don't know how much validity it has, but this video claims the Hutaree Militia is an Israeli Mossad front group.

    1. I suppose it's possible. Rather than subcontract their false-flag operations on their westernmost province's soil to their satrap organizations (FBI, CIA, BATF, DHS, etc.), I imagine that the Mossad occasionally does their dirty work here themselves.

    2. Well, Hutarees undoubtedly have rivals in end-times-gun-idolator circles. Just because they share some opinions doesn't mean they all like each other!

  13. @lesterness (comment #2):
    "I've wondered why nearly EVERY journalist, right, left or off-the-wall, ignores the influence of the Armeggedonites on US foreign policy. "

    Religious eschatologists really have no influence at all on U.S. government policy, domestic or otherwise. Their main function in foreign policy is to be the sheep chorus bleating "We're at war" (="Four legs good, two legs bad") in support of the pigs. Did you ever wonder what happened to the surplus sheep at Animal Farm?

  14. You are absolutely right to be skeptical, Scott. But don't forget that the US is a violent place in normal times, with a history of vigilante violence against scapegoats.

  15. Apparently, it's sound public policy for the government to wage war against the citizenry, but a federal offense to take notice of that fact.

  16. I remember back in 2001, the day after the 9-11 attacks (9-12), some guy in the Unorganized Militia of Kentucky went patrolling the back roads of northern Kentucky, to protect the Cincinnati area from Ayrabs. A state police patrol car wanted to stop him for a tail-light out. Mr. Pat Rioticidiot blasted them with a Kalashnikov, full-auto, a full clip! Then he zoomed off the the hills of East Kentucky. Fortunately, while the patrol car was stitched, neither cop was injured. After a week or two of being cold and hungry, Mr. Pat Rioticidiot turned himself in.

    The best part of the whole whoop-de-doo was how everyone else in the Unorganized Militia of Kentucky denied knowing Mr. Pat Rioticidiot. They'd thrown him out weeks ago! Or something.

    lesterness

  17. 11 attacks (9-12), some guy in the Unorganized Militia of Kentucky went patrolling the back roads of northern Kentucky, to protect the Cincinnati area from Ayrabs. A state police patrol car wanted to stop him for a tail-light out. Mr. Pat Rioticidiot blasted them with a Kalashnikov, full-auto, a full clip! Then he zoomed off the the hills of East Kentucky. Fortunately, while the patrol car w veste ralph lauren pas cher

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