And they are creating a dangerous atmosphere.
Psychological warfare is the planned tactical use of propaganda, threats, and other non-combat techniques during wars, threats of war, or periods of geopolitical unrest to mislead, intimidate, demoralize, or otherwise influence the thinking or behavior of an enemy.
Hateriots are the people we’ve been seeing who have been showing up armed, to peaceful protests to intimidate and harass people who are using their first amendment rights to protest for equality, in solidarity of Black lives, or to protest the use of slavery symbology on our public institutions. Typically, they call themselves “patriots,” but they do not behave in a patriotic way.
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Hateriots, in many North Texas towns, have been intentionally trying to work up the local militias, gun nuts, and PTSD vets.
On top of that, OAN and Fox news have been drilling into people’s heads that Antifa was real and them in combination with BLM were being paid by Soros to tear apart and burn down Portland, and your town is next.
We’ve seen videos of other encounters of protesters and Hateriots around the country. Philadelphia, Georgia, Michigan, and other places. But those occurrences have been sporadic, at best. However, what we’ve been seeing in North Texas has been a coordinated and intentional spread of misinformation, with the pure intention of putting BIPOC in harm’s way.
And in some cases, like with what we saw yesterday in Weatherford and last week in Cleburne, it backfired on them, having these armed militias showing up to fight an enemy that doesn’t exist.
Why did they show up?
Apparently one of these yokels made up the rumor that the NFAC was coming out to little shit-kicking Weatherford, with a population of 25,000, to tear their Confederate statue down. You know, these guys:
Yeah. Because of ALL of the Confederate statues in ALL the Southern States, the one in Weatherford is special, maybe even magical. Who knows?
So, all of these Hateriots started posting online that busloads if Antifa and BLM were headed straight for them. Other rumors claimed NFAC got a permit for 5,000 people.
None of this was true.
The reason this was psychological warfare, is because these Hateriots planned tactical use of propaganda during a time of unrest in an attempt to intimidate an enemy.
However, there is no enemy. Their enemy is imaginary. And we’ve seen this unfold in two ways. The first, is they show up with guns and their mouths fully loaded with racial epithets, and attack their Black and brown neighbors, (like with what we saw in Weatherford and Tyler a few weeks ago). Or, two, there isn’t an actual protest planned, and their efforts completely backfire on them.
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Like this weekend and last Saturday, it backfired on them.
There were no protests scheduled, there was no NFAC, no Antifa, and no BLM. So, the initial rumor starters and psychological warfare participants’ plan blew up in their face.
(Screenshots courtesy of Freedumb Parker County +)
But the thing is, that if only they would have looked at the Facebook page of the organizers of previous week’s protests or even the Weatherford Police’s Facebook, they would have found out that no such protests have been planned.
And the last protests were organized by the Progressives of Parker County, who live in Parker County. Yes, another group came in from Fort Worth to stand with Parker Country Progressives, in solidarity, so fucking what? The distance between Fort Worth and Weatherford is less than 25 miles if local progressives want to have friends that live less than 25 miles away, so fucking what.
The people who are showing up, wanting to exercise their first amendment rights were local residents.
And these Hateriots started online rumors about Antifa, BLM, and busloads of protesters then showed up armed, to attack, harass, and assault their neighbors, the people who belong to the Progressives of Parker County.
These are not facts. These rumors are not based on any type of reality.
It isn’t just Weatherford, in Parker County.
We saw this happen in July in Gainesville, up in Cooke County, counter-protester organizer, JP McWilliams made an open call for armed militia to come out to scare and intimidate local peaceful protesters, who lived in the area and were simply exercising their constitutional rights.
We saw it in Tyler when a group of Hateriots came out and physically attacked a peaceful protest led by the local democratic candidate, Hank Gilbert.
The protesters in Gainesville, PRO Gainesville, did not scare off, though. Nor has the Progressives of Parker County. Gainesville has continued weekly protests and has been met with armed Hateriots almost every week.
In 50 years from now, groups like PRO Gainesville and Progressives of Parker County will be remembered in history books, the same way that the brave souls who participated in the lunch counter sit-ins in the 1960s are remembered today.
These groups are standing up to the racial oppression in these rural Texas towns that once thrived in white supremacy.
They are standing up for their rights which are granted to them by the Constitution of the United States of America, regardless of how many racial extremists that want to intimate them back into suppression.
[mepr-hide] https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); [/mepr-hide]And just like the generations that came before them, these groups are even often putting themselves in harm’s way to stand up to the system of white supremacy which has plagued our nation since it’s very origin.
It’s inspiring.
Yet, the difference between the civil rights era of the 1960s and the civil rights era of the 2020s, is that our civil rights leaders today arm themselves just as well as the Hateriots coming out to intimidate them. After all, this is Texas.
And that’s what we are seeing now, in 2020, a civil rights movement, an uprising, and a fight against the systemic white supremacy which continues to be a cancer in our Nation.
(Screenshots courtesy of Freedumb Parker County +)
If you don’t think this is a civil rights movement or a fight for racial justice, you don’t need to look any further than the multiple Facebook pages which have popped up in the last few weeks dedicated to exposing these Hateriots. Pages like Hoods Off Denton, Hoods Off Cooke County, Freedumb in Parker County +, and Boycott Racist Weatherford TX.
(Disclaimer: Living Blue in Texas is in no way affiliated with the Facebook pages above. We share their content because we applaud their mission and think it’s righteous.)
[mepr-hide] https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); [/mepr-hide]These pages have taken up the purpose of exposing the racism, the violence, and the threats coming from the Hateriots online. By doing this, they’ve managed to expose not only the racism of these groups but also the hypocrisy and hatred.
From Boycott Racist Weatherford TX:
Three key takeaways from the interviews in the Weatherford Democrat article.
1) The hate groups think it’s fine for THEM to bring friends from outside Parker County to their little rally, but have a BIG problem with it when the Progressive group invited a handful of friends from with the group Enough is Enough in FW.
2) The same hate groups think it’s ok for THEM openly carry semi-automatic weapons, but have a BIG problem with groups that are largely made up of black people doing the same. (They obviously don’t have a lot of faith in law enforcement to handle things either, even though they claim to “back the blue”.)
3) The hate groups have a BIG problem with the group Enough is Enough that was here a few weeks ago, in part because they have protested at FW businesses that have had problematic racial situations. They criticize them for interfering with businesses. Yet THEY have no problem causing local small businesses to have to shut down for the day for their hate rally.
Absolute hypocrisy. Things that are ok for their own groups are absolutely unacceptable for other groups. The main difference between the two groups? Race.
[mepr-hide] https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); [/mepr-hide]It isn’t just protests met with lies, propaganda, and threatened violence.
It’s also Black residents in McKinney, TX attending their local city council meetings.
(Video curtsey of JP, Kathy, and Crew)
We wrote about the lies this one liar, Chad Green, was spreading online about local McKinney citizens last week in our articles, “McKinney Continues to Grapple with Race.”
This one person was making flat out lies and spreading them among Hateriot groups to try and egg people to come out and shoot their Black neighbors, or the security which came to protect them.
My article last week showed plenty of screenshots that showed threats against local Black residents, the security that came out because of other previous threats, and the activists which came out to document the situation.
Chad Green went ahead and took it one step further and took his lies to the JP, Kathy, and the Crew, a local online podcast. He further told compete falsehoods, which JP and Kathy believed, aired, and then thanked him for his bravery. Of course, it wasn’t the podcast’s fault. As a right-leaning podcast, they likely have only been privy to the same lies spread online like the ones Chad Green was perpetrating.
[mepr-hide] https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); [/mepr-hide]This is exactly why activists come out to document these situations. To show the truth. And there is plenty of videos documenting every minute of what happened at this council meeting, inside, outside, and down at the Confederate statue.
What Chad Green and others like him are trying to do is get their Black and brown neighbors shot and killed, by one of these unhinged Hateriots that have been gearing up for a race war since Obama’s first term.
We all should be terrified, right now.
Local law enforcement is doing very little to prevent violence, protect protesters, and many local activists have been asserting that in places like Gainesville and Weatherford, law enforcement may be involved or at very least sympathetic towards these Hateriots.
Another protest is planned tonight in Gainesville. It’s supposed to start right now actually. There have been more threats against peaceful protesters.
North Texas is a hotbed more than any other area in Texas or America right now. They are trying to start a race war and kill BIPOC. Some already feel as if the race war has started.
It’s terrifying and dangerous. But the civil rights leaders of 2020 will not stand down. The era of American white supremacy is coming to an end. And too many people want that. They want it for the safety of their own children. They aren’t going to slink quietly off into the shadows.
Still Blue in Texas 