OUR PICKSArmed Drones & Terrorism | Anti-Government Threats | Fumbling Russian Spies, and more
· Anti-Government Threats Are Up, but It’s Tough to Assess Them
· Extremism Experts Sound the Alarm as Trump Supporters Threaten Civil War on TikTok
· House Oversight Chairs Call on Social Media Companies to Address Violent Threats Against Federal Law Enforcement
· Antisemitic Threats on Truth Social Continue in the Wake of FBI’s Mar-A-Lago Raid
· Do Armed Drones Reduce Terrorism? Here’s the Data.
· Russia’s Spies Misread Ukraine and Misled Kremlin as War Loomed
· The Armed Resistance Against the Taliban Is Still Here
· UK Police Detail ‘Remarkable’ Probe into IS ‘Beatles’ Cell
· Belgian Jihadism: A Thing of the Past?
Anti-Government Threats Are Up, but It’s Tough to Assess Them (Odette Yousef, NPR)
Shortly after news broke that federal agents had executed a court-authorized search for documents at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, Rita Katz said she and her team jumped online. Katz, the founder and executive director of the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist communities online, said they were primarily interested in what discussions looked like in spaces frequented by the far right, such as Telegram, Gab and Truth Social. “What we saw were calls for civil war,” said Katz. “Calls such as, ‘This is what the Second Amendment stands for,’ and asking then, ‘When does the shooting start?’ “ In the days after, a man was killed in a standoff with the FBI after he attempted to attack the agency’s field office in Cincinnati. The U.S. Department of Justice has also charged a man in Pennsylvania with threatening federal law enforcement officers after he allegedly posted violent statements online. The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security issued a joint intelligence bulletin highlighting the escalation in violent rhetoric against their agencies and employees. But even as law enforcement may be monitoring or alerted to threats made in these spaces, experts say that responding to them will be challenging.
Extremism Experts Sound the Alarm as Trump Supporters Threaten Civil War on TikTok (Richard Hall, Independent)
The videos share a few common themes: they are filmed by an excitable solo protagonist. That protagonist is often addressing fellow “patriots” and asking them to prepare for something very big to happen. They include some veiled or explicit threat of violence in response. And many of them are posted on TikTok, the short-form video app made popular by dancing teenagers. In the wake of the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago, threats of violence against federal agents from Donald Trump’s supporters have skyrocketed, according to extremism monitors. Warnings of civil war and veiled threats of violence against politicians have also increased. (Cont.)
