Kurt Nimmo says that there is no problem with violent white supremacists in the military.

His boss, Alex Jones, says that there is no problem with gun violence in America – at least, no problem that’s not a result of government-sponsored “mind-control” experiments.

Jones and Nimmo, who are among the biggest spinners of conspiracy theories in the United States, are revered within the antigovernment “Patriot” movement, which is always eager to ascribe malevolent plots to the government. Their fantastical allegations appeared recently on Infowars and PrisonPlanet, Jones-run websites that warn obsessively of a supposed government conspiracy to surrender national sovereignty to the forces of a fascistic “New World Order.” ( continue to full post… )

Editor’s Note: This article was first published on Aug. 19 in The Spokesman-Review, based in Spokane, Wash. The 11-day siege at Ruby Ridge began 20 years ago today, on Aug. 21, 1992. The author of this post covered the Aryan Nations and other extremist groups during his 37-year career as a reporter with The  Spokesman-Review.

Ruby Ridge.

Who would have thought 20 years ago this week that those two words would become an icon, a reference point in American culture? ( continue to full post… )

With last weekend’s mass killing at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin fresh in the public’s memory, the usual players on the conspiracy scene have begun crafting wild, alternative narratives of what really happened.

The theory has started to spread that the attack was orchestrated by some dark sector of the federal government in order to justify rolling back gun rights. This idea, of course, has long been used by the antigovernment right to explain acts of domestic terrorism: Oklahoma City, for example, and even the jihadist attack on the Twin Towers in 2001. The Wisconsin version has appeared on dozens of right-wing blogs and appears to be gaining traction.

Infowars, the conspiracist website maintained by Alex Jones, seems to have led the charge. In an article published earlier this week after neo-Nazi Wade Michael Page killed six people in Oak Creek, Wis., writer Kurt Nimmo accused the federal government – and, ludicrously, the Southern Poverty Law Center – of somehow being tied to the shootings. The proof? Only dubious claims pulled from Page’s life story. The alleged skinhead gunman was in a psychological operations unit in the Army during the 1990s. ( continue to full post… )

Two antigovernment “sovereign citizens” who refused to get out of their truck – only to be surrounded by SWAT teams near Spokane, Wash. –  ultimately were arrested Wednesday by the only authority they truly recognize: the county sheriff.

Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich told Hatewatch today that he excused himself from an afternoon meeting at the Public Safety Building after being informed of a potentially violent standoff involving his deputies and two self-proclaimed sovereign citizens.

The truck, stopped by detectives and uniformed deputies in Otis Orchards, had invalid license plates and “was covered in sovereign citizen signs, including one that said it was a ‘noncommercial private vehicle’ and ‘no trespassing,’” The Spokesman-Review reported in Thursday’s editions. ( continue to full post… )

One of five self-proclaimed anarchists has pleaded guilty to three federal “weapons of mass destruction” charges in a conspiracy to blow up a bridge, a Ku Klux Klan gathering spot and a Federal Reserve Bank in Ohio.

Anthony M. Hayne, 35, of Cleveland, pleaded guilty Wednesday to conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction, attempted use of weapons of mass destruction and malicious use of an explosive device to destroy property used in interstate commerce.

Hayne entered his pleas before U.S. District Judge David Dowd in Cleveland and agreed to testify against the other defendants. Prosecutors said he could have received life in prison, but under the plea deal he could lower his sentence to 15 to 19 years. No date for sentencing was set. ( continue to full post… )

Federal prosecutors in Las Vegas have obtained the second conviction in a case involving  two “sovereign citizen” extremists who laundered $1.3 million provided by undercover FBI agents investigating a network of sovereigns.

After a two-day nonjury trial that ended yesterday, Shawn Talbot Rice, 49, was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and 13 counts of money laundering. He was also convicted on four separate counts of failure to appear in court.

Rice was taken into custody last Dec. 22 after a 10-hour standoff with FBI agents and local police in Seligman, Ariz. He had been on the run for two years after failing to appear in court for a hearing in which prosecutors hoped to revoke an order allowing him to act as his own attorney. ( continue to full post… )

The Tea Party Nation, one of the more extreme factions of the Tea Party movement, has dipped deeper into the conspiratorial waters of antigovernment lore, most recently promoting the Oath Keepers and other antigovernment “Patriots” as the last line of defense for Americans increasingly confronted with “a government verging on evil.”

In a post published over the weekend on the Tea Party Nation’s website, regular blogger Alan Caruba painted a dire picture of the threats to freedom that lie in wait under President Obama, whom he calls a “red diaper baby” and a far-left functionary “raised from birth and mentored to embrace communism.”

“Obama’s disregard for the Constitution, its separation of powers, and Americans suffering greatly from his policies, suggests that he is not beyond making the greatest grab for power using a bogus ‘national emergency’ or manufactured ‘crisis’ to declare martial law,” Caruba wrote. He goes on to cite three recent executive orders as proof positive that Obama is setting up the nation to abandon its constitutional mandates and wage an all-out campaign against freedom. ( continue to full post… )

Alaska militia leader Francis Schaeffer Cox has fired his attorney, likely laying the groundwork for an appeal of his nine convictions, which include conspiring to kill a judge and law enforcement officials.

In a two-sentence document filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Anchorage, the 28-year-old leader of the Alaska Peacemakers Militia said he had discharged defense attorney Nelson Traverso. “I do so voluntarily and intelligently and will seek other counsel,” Cox said.

The basis for the firing, Cox contends, is that Traverso was ineffective and didn’t provide a proper defense, leading to Cox’s jury conviction and, quite likely, a lengthy prison sentence. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 14, but that date could be postponed to allow his new attorney time to review the case. ( continue to full post… )

Certain things should not be mixed together. Bleach and ammonia. White wine and red meat. Alex Jones and Joseph Farah.

Proof of the latter mixture’s toxicity came last week, when Jones, the gravelly voiced Internet personality best known for his obsession with “truther” theories about the government’s supposed complicity in 9/11, interviewed Farah, the mustachioed overlord of all things “birther,” on his radio show.

For the most part, the two conspiracists’ conversation went pretty much as you would expect: chitchat about a supposed plan to disarm all Americans; furious denunciations of the Supreme Court’s recent decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act; speculation that the government would soon declare that “mom and apple pie and George Washington are terrorists.” ( continue to full post… )

In the family of one of the antigovernment “sovereign citizen” movement’s most notorious ideologues, the apple seems to have fallen tragically close to the tree.

Jessica Gutierrez, the daughter of the late sovereign citizen Jerry Kane, was among 18 suspects charged by the Ohio attorney general in connection with a telemarketing scam that defrauded elderly victims out of millions of dollars. Victims were told over the phone that their properties, usually unused areas of deserts, swamps and other virtually worthless land, could be sold to “interested buyers” for as much as 15 times their true worth –– but only if the sellers first paid “closing costs” ranging from $500 to $16,000 to the scam artists. ( continue to full post… )