Far-Right ‘Terrorgram’ Chatrooms Are Fueling a Wave of Power Grid Attacks
Far-Right ‘Terrorgram’ Chatrooms Are Fueling a Wave of Power Grid Attacks
People in a quiet neighborhood in Carthage, a town in Moore County, North Carolina, heard a series of six loud pops a few minutes before 8:00 p.m. on Dec. 3, 2022. A resident named Michael Campbell said he ducked at the sound. Another witness told police they thought they were hearing fireworks. The noise turned out to be someone shooting a rifle at a power substation next door to Campbell's home. The substation, operated by the utility Duke Energy Corp., consists of equipment that converts electricity into different voltages as it's transported to the area and then steered into individual houses. The shots hit the radiator of an electrical transformer, a sensitive piece of technology whose importance would likely be understood only by utility company employees. It began dumping a "vast amount" of oil, according to police reports. A subsequent investigation has pointed to a local right-wing group, one of a wave of attacks or planned attacks on power infrastructure.
By 8:10 the lights in Carthage went out. Minutes later, a security alarm went off at a Duke Energy substation 10 miles away, this one protected from view by large pine trees. When company personnel responded, they found that someone had shot its transformer radiator, too. Police found shell casings on the ground at the site and noticed someone had slashed the tires on nearby service trucks. The substations were designed to support each other, with one capable of maintaining service if the other went down. Knocking out both facilities prevented the company from rerouting power. Police described the two incidents as a coordinated attack. About 45,000 families and businesses remained dark for four days. This was a burden for area grocery stores and local emergency services. One woman, 87-year-old Karin Zoanelli, died in the hours after the shooting when the blackout caused her oxygen machine to stop operating. The North Carolina Medical Examiner's office classified the death as a homicide.
The attack on Duke's facilities in Moore County remains unsolved, but law enforcement officials and other experts suspect it's part of a rising trend of far-right extremists targeting power infrastructure in an attempt to sow chaos. The most ambitious of these saboteurs hope to usher in societal collapse, paving the way for the violent overthrow of the US government, according to researchers who monitor far-right communities.
Damaging the power grid has long been a fixation of right-wing extremists, who have plotted such attacks for many years. They've been getting a boost recently from online venues such as "Terrorgram," a loose network of channels on the social media platform Telegram where users across the globe advocate violent white supremacism. In part, people use Terrorgram to egg one another on -- a viral meme shows a stick figure throwing a Molotov cocktail at electrical equipment. People on the forum have also seized on recent anti-immigration riots in the UK, inciting people there to clash with police. In June 2022, months before the Moore County shootings, users on the forum began offering more practical support in the form of a 261-page document titled "Hard Reset," which includes specific directions on how to use automatic weapons, explosives and mylar balloons to disrupt electricity. One of the document's suggestions is to shoot high-powered firearms at substation transformers.
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Why can’t there be a lefty terror organization that focuses on terrorizing billionaires and corrupt politicians instead of innocent civilians just trying to heat their homes.
Because the moment you threaten their money is the moment they take action.
Ask the Palestinian peace protesters who got rounded up and purged from college campuses last year.
The surveillance state's primary reason for existence is the monitoring and targeting of anti-business dissidents. Conservatives have, historically, been staunchly pro business and so have largely been neglected from the surveillance net. So they're free to commit acts of terror - particularly ones aimed at communities of migrants, LGBTQ groups, and communities of color - with impunity, while folks hostile to the MIC and related industries are targeted and suppressed long before they can become a serious threat.
Maybe that will change, as movement conservatives sour on the large corporate entities that run our country. But I'm willing to bet they'll fall back in line with another giant injection of AM Talk Radio propaganda, while right-wing stocastic violence turns back to the age old tradition of burning down churches, bombing abortion clinics, and flinging acid on people they don't like out and about in public.
I’m mostly looking for a group who is focused on change within the country as a primary motivation, and not foreign policy.
One Struggle
Because in the 00s the FBI cracked down on the slightest whiff of terrorism from the left in the green scare. We developed a culture of fear and caution while the right was emboldened
Just don’t focus on government officials and make everything seem like an accident or random violence. 🤷♂️
What is this, Hitman?
Dibs on the waiter outfit.
To me, it seems largely because right-wing extremists are violent revolutionaries across different regions and classes, from the very poor to the very rich, that share overlapping ideologies that are antagonistic to the state and racial "others." They are largely decentralized, very active, cellular, and have established a large, global communications network. This is a very serious problem and a clear and growing threat.
Most lefties are revolutionary in posture or "ideal" only, can't agree on what to do to get to that ideal, and in their actions more often tacitly support a return to a so-called "progressive" status quo than anything truly radical--though they'll consistently express how very revolutionary their ideals are.
In terms of judging someone by their actions rather than their words, the right seems revolutionary, the left seems reformist. But that's just my observations on the cultural terrain over the last decade.
I'm sure that will make a lot of keyboard-leftists angry, and I know how frustrating it might seem, but it is just my opinion. Simply put: who would you be worried about? Who is the FBI more worried about? Who are the US, UK, and Canadian governments, for example, more worried about?
If Fox News has to make things up about you to make you threatening and no one else cares, you're probably not the revolutionaries.
Also a solid percent of lefties are historically literate and understand that theres also the threat of say a bolshevik style backstabbing. Combine that with the fact that more work has been kept through gradual and tactical reform and ya end up with a reformist heavy group, which makes sense the reason we backslid on say labor rights was due to a generation of lead poisoned idiots not a failure of the old union organizers.
Why can’t there be no terror organizations.
FTFY
Nothing gets you nothing.
That’s a protest. I mean something more planned, under the radar, and the kind of thing a group takes credit for after they all escape the area.
Bold of you to assume leftists manage to escape instead of getting shot 57 times in cold-blooded murder.
Protest… vs… planned.
Why does the left shit on the left lol
The fuck are you talking about? Pointing out that the ruling class' enforcers brutally suppress leftists is hardly blaming the victims for it!
…. What?
You’re reading me all wrong. I’m not blaming victims. I’m saying protesting is not what I’m looking for. I feel I’ve been very clear this entire time.
Okay, but I've been disregarding that distinction because it doesn't matter -- or if it did, it would only be in the sense that the FBI etc. would attack groups trying to do what you're talking about even more aggressively than they do protestors. You're asking about why lefty terror organizations aren't a thing, and I'm telling you that it's because, when lefties are getting shot 57 times just for protesting, lefties trying to do actual terrorism would get turned into smoking craters in short order and nobody's that suicidal.
Meanwhile, in stark contrast, the same Powers That Be treat right-wing terrorists with the softest and gentlest of kid gloves, and that's how they're able to continue to fester.
then I guess there is no hope 🤷♂️
There is, but it would require a big Overton window shift and a lot of manpower.
I'd cite MLK's "Poor People's Campaign" as an example of the sort of magnitude you'd need, but, well, we all know what happened to him once he started talking about class instead of just race. Clearly, the lower bound is higher than that.
I remember a group call Earth Liberation Front that blew up a AM radio tower in the woods about 20 years ago. Didn't accomplish fuck all for the earth though. They thought AM radio was bad for the animals.
edit: Found it. http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/09/04/washington.towers.terrorism/index.html
Antifa tried that but they were too busy terrorizing lower to middle class white people. That didn't last too long.
But to their credit they are/were doing the whole Stop Copy City thing.