How Much Worse Could America’s Measles Outbreak Get? | The Insurrectionary Anarchist Campaign Against Tesla | Inside the ‘Strangest Terrorist movement the US Has Ever Seen’, and more

Modern-Day Lynchings: The Long History of Gamified White Supremacist Terrorism  (Samantha Olson and Jacob Ware, GNET)
When a terrorist opened fire on African Americans at a Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo, New York, in May 2022, the livestream was an essential part of his operation. The gunman declared in his manifesto: “I think that live streaming this attack gives me some motivation in the way that I know that some people will be cheering for me.” 
The attacker, Payton Gendron, was inspired by a fellow white supremacist terrorist who livestreamed an attack in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March 2019. However, Gendron was also tapping into a far longer historical precedent. Throughout American history, white supremacist murderers have eagerly adopted new communications technologies in order to publicize their killings. Dating back to the Reconstruction period after the American Civil War, the torture, mutilation, and murder of Black bodies has been a sport—lynchings, executed by self-anointed chivalric white men, were designed for public consumption. Today, new technologies have only empowered these dark rituals. Parallel to how “great replacement theory” – the belief that there is a global conspiracy to eradicate the white race –  inspired much postbellum violence, modern livestreamed killings are but the latest iteration of the grim American tradition of lynching. As this Insight suggests, emerging communications technologies have always been readily adapted by extremists looking to broadcast racialized violence. 

‘Welcome Spring, Burn a Tesla’: The Insurrectionary Anarchist Campaign Against Tesla  (Mauro Lubrano, GNET)
This Insight explores the growing wave of attacks against Tesla across Europe and North America. While some incidents appear linked to Elon Musk’s role in President Donald Trump’s second administration, a deeper current runs beneath the surface. These attacks fall into two broad categories: on one side are stochastic reactions to current political events; on the other, a more ideologically coherent anti-technology campaign rooted in insurrectionary anarchism. For these actors, Tesla is not just a political or corporate target but a powerful emblem of the techno-industrial system they seek to dismantle – an avatar of surveillance, ecological devastation disguised as ‘green’ technology, and elite control.

The MAGA Revolution Threatens America’s Most Innovative Place  (Economist)
Cuts to funding risk hobbling Boston’s science establishment.

How Much Worse Could America’s Measles Outbreak Get?  (Economist)
Our charts show how falling vaccination rates could lead to a surge in cases.

US Gun Trafficking to Mexico: Independent Gun Shops Supply the Most Dangerous Weapons  (Sean Campbell and Topher L. McDougal, The Conversation)
U.S. independent firearm businesses are the largest suppliers of crime guns bought in the U.S. and trafficked to Mexico.
We are a professor of economic development and an investigative journalist. We have spent a year sifting through documents and datasets during our investigation of gun trafficking to Mexico and its effects. We built a dataset of trafficked weapons linked to 100 U.S. court cases. We combined this with leaked records of crime guns that were seized by authorities in Mexico from 2018 to 2020 and traced back to gun dealers in the U.S. by the ATF.

Gun Trafficking from the US to Mexico: The Drug Connection  (Sean Campbell and Topher L. McDougal, The Conversation)
Illegal firearm trafficking is inseparable from the illegal drug trade: Weapons are often bought with drug money, can strengthen cartels and can be traded for drugs.

How Do Extremists Get That Way? Probably Quite Naturally.  (Leor Zmigrod, Harvard Gazette)
In new book, neuroscientist Leor Zmigrod traces connections between brain biology, political beliefs.
She writes:

From fascism and communism to eco-activism and spiritual evangelism, ideological groups offer absolute and utopian answers to societal troubles, strict rules for behavior, and an ingroup mentality through dedicated practices and symbols. These features exist across the spectrum of ideological persuasions. Such characteristics can emerge even when the ideology is guided by the sincerest intentions and noblest ideals — even if it claims to protect human dignity or flourishing.
While most definitions perceive ideologies as historical currents and sociological movements, I am interested in examining ideologies as psychological phenomena instead. This psychological lens allows us to ask what an ideology does to its believers and whom it most easily attracts. By spotlighting the processes happening within individual brains, we can probe when an ideology constrains its followers’ mental lives and whether it can ever liberate them.

Number of US White Nationalist Groups Falls as Extremist Views Go Mainstream  (Léonie Chao-Fong, Guardian)
The number of white nationalist, hate and anti-government extremist groups in the US has dropped not because of their declining influence, but because many of their proponents feel their beliefs have become normalized in government and mainstream society, according to a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
The SPLC’s annual Year in Hate and Extremism report, published on Thursday, said it documented 1,371 hate and extremist groups across the country in 2024, down from 1,430 groups in 2023.
The 5% drop in hate and extremist groups in 2024 can be attributed to the fact that many feel a lesser sense of urgency to organize, because their beliefs have infiltrated politics, education and society in general, according to the report.

Inside the ‘Strangest Terrorist movement the US Has Ever Seen’  (Josie Ensor, The Times)
“Is life an illness?” asks a member of a fringe chat group on the internet. “I’m not depressed,” writes another. “I just don’t want to exist.” Both identify as “morose and misanthropic” men in the Promortalism group on the chat forum Discord. They are two of several thousand members who sign in regularly to debate the merits of being alive. Such reflection on human existence has been happening in the darker reaches of the internet for years. But last weekend, the philosophy took on real-world consequences when one of the promortalist movement’s followers bombed a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, killing himself and leaving four injured.

What Are People Still Doing on X?  (Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic)
Imagine if your favorite neighborhood bar turned into a Nazi hangout.