Another “boogaloo boi” was arrested. This time it was Ivan Hunter, last time it was Ryan Teeter. Both times, the government and media ran the same story about both people, despite neither being true. They want you to believe that these two people were right wingers, bent on inciting a civil war in order to establish a right wing dictatorship upon the rubble. And while this couldn’t be further from the truth, and while it only requires a small amount of investigation to debunk, for some reason, most mainstream outlets seem unwilling to do basic research in order to make sure that they get their pieces right. Could it be that sensationalism overrides the ethics of journalism? Like maybe the profit motive for exploiting a topic one knows will trend overrides integrity? Well, let’s find out. I’ll start in order by talking about the first person to be arrested associated with this movement, Ryan Teeter.

On May 9th 2020, photos were taken of an open carry and reopen demonstration in Raleigh, North Carolina, and without asking anyone any questions about the subjects of these photos, a score of people simply assumed they were republicans and painted them as such. Patton Oswalt, Mia Farrow, and Kathy Griffin, among many others, all chimed in on the situation, immediately. Kathy asserted they were, “Republicans ordering sandwiches at a Subway Sandwich in Raleigh, N.C.” Instead of questioning this narrative, many alleged “news” outlets simply ran with it. Fox News uncritically published Kathy’s tweet, obviously trying to slant it in the direction of a detached Hollywood elite being against anything Republican or freedom-related. The New York Post took the opposite slant, not only including Kathy’s tweet, but siding with her and somebody else, writing a love letter to somebody who made parody images of the protesters carrying sandwiches instead of guns. CBS predictably went with the neoliberal route of parroting other people accusing the group of white privilege, The Hill ended their piece about it by appraising North Carolina’s Democratic governor Roy Cooper and his reopening plan, implying that these people were standing in the way.

Everybody seemed to parrot this narrative. Evil armed Republicans were marching through the streets being awful and terrible, and anyone who is on their side is the enemy. The original paper where the photos first appeared also has video the author claims captures footage of the armed Republicans terrorizing a family. Never mind that when you watch the footage, the family had been across the street hurling insults at them, and continued to hurl insults at them even as only one of the armed protesters approached them, and after. If this was “terrorism”, it failed miserably, because nobody was terrorized. But let’s be clear, this wasn’t terrorism. The outlet that ran those photos wanted sensationalism, and they didn’t care about the truth. That’s why they were all too happy to report when Subway changed their policies over the incident, and why they ran about 10 pieces on the situation in total. Nobody ever issued a correction about any of it, and why would they? It makes them a lot of money.

But part of the problem with being this profit driven is the fact that you might get things wrong in the pursuit of the almighty dollar. And in this particular case, their collectivism blinded them to reality. Ryan Teeter took to social media to respond to all of the people calling him a Republican, and tell them the truth, while making some rather amusing comments in the process. That’s how I found out about him, and why we’re now mutual followers on Twitter. The truth is, the poster child for the whole thing, and the one Kathy Griffin mocked exclusively, is a left-libertarian, interested in “bottom unity”, meaning the coalition of all people interested in ending the state. It also means he doesn’t like the idea of infighting, as he believes it’s misused energy, which should be used to go against those who hold our chains. But even though this information came out, nobody appended any information to their articles about the incident, despites still having people accusing them all of being right wingers, and no evidence thereof. All these alleged “news personalities” would much rather simply parrot what a celebrity said, rather than do any actual investigative work. Which is why all they did was quote Kathy Griffin, because then later if it’s found that she was wrong, they can hide behind the fact that it wasn’t their words they were using, simply somebody prominent. It’s a coward’s tactic, and not befitting a news organization at all.

Fast forward to a little later when Ryan was arrested in connection with an allegation that he gave material support to Hamas. All it took was a press release involving his indictment for the entire news media to start parroting each other again. Nobody even entertained the possibility that he wasn’t guilty of the charges, because they had already marked him as a target. It was OK to say whatever was necessary to bring him down, because he was a valid target, which is why they were OK with lying about him before. Anyone who wants real change will be subject to relentless media criticism, and ultimately, if the state decides they do something wrong, the media won’t need any proof, only the allegations involved, especially if they’ve already leveled their scope at the person in question. This was no different. This is why the articles in question still ran with the dangerous narrative that all boogaloo bois are right wing terrorists. Even when they referenced the old articles on the subject, they didn’t issue any corrections, even though there’s a wealth of new information on the subject, and it’s easy to find. All these people would need to do is look at the Kathy Griffin tweet everybody posted in order to see his replies to her, and all of the conclusive proof necessary to show that he’s a left-libertarian, and not, in fact, some kind of fascist far right extremist bent on racially motivated civil war.

As a relevant side tangent, I can say if you want another example of this story, feel free to check out my video on a heretofore unnamed man that the SPLC baselessly connected to white supremacy and fascism. I solidly proved that possibly 100 news outlets had run with the same narrative regarding a photograph, by connecting his face and his identifiable gear to white supremacy with no evidence at all that he was actually a white supremacist. In fact, I spoke with the photojournalist who took the photos; he was not happy that his photos had been used in that way, as he had actually spoken to the person in question, and had no indication whatsoever that the person was a white supremacist. Unfortunately, the nature of his position meant that he couldn’t control how photos were used. Once you buy a license, you can use them for whatever you want, and in this case, the SPLC bought a license in order to paint a guy as a white supremacist, when they had absolutely no evidence he was one. My interaction was civil only with him. The SPLC repeatedly declined to comment when I approached them multiple times with the information.

Additionally, I ran a story before many other people did on the now infamous Covington Kid case, where Nick Sandmann was alleged to be a racist by the mockingbird press, to the point where he and his classmates got countless death threats over having “surrounded” what the media would have you believe was a “helpless Native American who was doing nothing but playing music”. Problem is, that wasn’t what was happening. In fact, what happened is these students were being harassed and insulted by a racist group of historical revisionists who regularly employ antisemitism, anti-white, and anti-Hispanic rhetoric, and more, and these students were singing school anthems as a response, for which a local tribal elder walked into the middle of their crowd, and stood in front of somebody banging a drum and singing, while that someone just stood there smiling. This was perceived as racist, not because of any evidence, but because a wide variety of news outlets simply called it that. So, I found the footage and put it in place so that people could see that the crowd did not surround the man. The man walked into the crowd. My post was shared by Trump supporters, because they understood that even though I’m an anarchist, I can still be right, especially about the government-controlled media. This is what the elites want to stop. And that brings me to the next case.

I’ve known Ivan Hunter on Twitter for a bit. He was in a group message I’m in on Twitter, and I’ve had the opportunity to speak with him on multiple occasions. He’s long been frustrated with the divide between the left and the right, and identifies as a libertarian who supports Jo Jorgensen and wants more cooperation and less compromise between the people who also identify as libertarian, whether they be on the left or right. Just one look at his Twitter profile will tell you that, because his banner depicts a union between the Gadsden snake “don’t tread on me” people, and the literal Black Panthers. He wants to see people unite, especially around the ideas of racial justice, and against the police. He sees the slow advancement of the state as a slow chipping away at the human spirit itself. And he’s tired of seeing all the revolutionary energy – that many libertarians claim to have – wasted on fighting one another, and fighting other anti-state activists, and he wants to see people focus that energy on actually doing something to end the state. Because of that, and because of how long he’s watched as nothing meaningful has happened, frustration has a way of changing what a man is willing to do.

On May 25th, 2020, a man named George Floyd was suspected of having used a counterfeit bill at a local convenience store. In response to this, multiple officers came out and harassed him for a significant period of time, heightening his stress and anxiety, and quickly cuffing him, only to put him in the back of a patrol car while he was having an anxiety attack. He didn’t resist much, but the resistance he did put in was used as a precursor to throwing him on the pavement, and having two officers put body weight on his back; well, one officer put weight on his neck, all of them compressing the air out of his lungs so that he couldn’t breathe. For 8 minutes and 46 seconds, a time now infamous to a lot of people, these people compressed his lungs and made breathing impossible, to the point where after repeatedly pleading for his life, and for even a little air, George Floyd passed away. In any other circumstance this would have been considered murder, but not so here.

National outrage took place, as it commonly does with modern day cases of police brutality. And everybody wanted to know what would happen to the officers responsible. Fast forward one day, and protests broke out, where a lot of people were very angry for a long time. The vast majority of them were peaceful. But a nation’s police can only kill an average of 1000 people a year by gunfire alone, and yet more by other means, before people start to realize that the system will constantly look after its own – and when it comes down to investigations and trials, not treat those in power with the same level of jurisprudence as the rest of us. And after a long history of racial profiling, especially in poor neighborhoods where the black community is already economically suppressed, there will be a lot of tension when yet another one of them is killed seemingly unnecessarily. There was a lot of hostility and rage, and eventually that boiled over.

From May 27th to May 29th, the second most damaging riot in US history took place, and 1500 properties were damaged along with $500 million in damage. It spread to multiple cities, and sparked global protests in general, the outrage being heard all across the Earth. The only riot more damaging was the Los Angeles riots surrounding the beating of Rodney King. Coincidentally, both of these were caught on video, and the Rodney King beating being caught on video was considered an inciting incident for many police accountability movements to come. The National Guard was called into this one, in the largest deployment of said troops since World War 2. But if Martin Luther King Jr. was correct, and riots are the language of the unheard, then this would be one of the loudest and clearest riots in American history. Many departments changed their policies, and many other departments unwilling to do so simply quit. And now police brutality is on everyone’s lips, and the discussion is still being had to this moment by the vast majority of people, at least in some capacity. Now, to be clear, MLK also said that we must condemn both riots and the conditions which cause them. I’m not saying I support a bunch of property damage, as I think doing so would be a broken window fallacy in action. However, understanding the context of the following situation is necessary to understanding the story of Ivan Hunter.

The allegations against Ivan are basically hanging the whole protest around his head. On October 24th, boogaloo boys trended on Twitter yet again, accusing the entire group of being right wing terrorists who only want chaos. The article Twitter chose to highlight, given the fact that it wasn’t actually about trends (and it usually isn’t) was from the Star Tribune.

Side note: it’s always amusing to watch what Twitter puts on their trending pages, because it’s never the little guy, from the perspective of the kind of person who built their platform from the ground up, and it’s always some mainstream media personality, or outlet, at the forefront. Sort of like YouTube and their trends, always pushing corporate media, never really the “you” in YouTube anymore.

So, what did the Star Tribune have to say?

They’re accusing him of being the first person to damage the police station, having fired an AK 47 into its storefront, and of having coordinated with somebody else who actually killed somebody. But when the allegations against Ivan were put forward, the article in question accused him of being a right wing terrorist. It parroted the affidavit filed by the FBI, accusing Hunter of having not only fired 13 shots into the police station while people were inside, but that he also looted the place, and was one of the initial people to set it on fire. The article is careful to craft the narrative, including the pictures of the burning building, but not including any actual proof he had something to do with it. They also used a picture of Ivan with Ryan Teeter, connecting the dots themselves that these two people knew each other, and were therefore obviously evil, and definitely part of the right wing conspiracy that they talked about in the article. But as anyone who knows about either of these people knows, they are not right wing, they are libertarian unity advocates who want to see the people start to reclaim their power.

By the way, while I’m at it, isn’t it pretty funny that the story of a damaged cop shop where nobody was killed is somehow bigger news than all the other much more expensive property damage that took place? Why don’t we have a story for every one of the over 600 arrests that arose from that? I think it’s amusing whenever the state makes it obvious that they care about their own more than us. The only reason this story is big and being treated as seriously as it is is because of the targets, and the rest of us are expendable. No dramatic investigation into the ties of the many other rioters has been done or likely will be done, as there is less of a story and less of a spin when you can’t weaponize it against the alleged “side” of your opponents. Not everybody is a “dangerous anarchist”, or an “evil right winger”. So, they only went with what they could sensationalize and abuse for more political power. Funny how that works. Anyway…

Assuming these things are true, I’m not writing this article because I endorse working with Hamas. Also, as anyone who has followed me for some time knows, I don’t endorse using apps like Facebook and Twitter to coordinate any sort of activity like this. And while we may be mutuals on Twitter, this is not my op, and I am in no way connected to it. I think the whole thing was sloppy, and poorly handled. And if Ryan was actively working with Hamas, it was also unethical. Those people are scumbags, and anyone who knows anything about international relations would know that. I’m not gonna go out of my way to 100% endorse anything about anything these people allegedly did, and I’m not suggesting people repeat their model. In fact, I think that would be rather stupid. However, I think this provides a valuable object lesson in the way the media, government, and society, will all treat you if you decide to go significantly against their model of doing things.

These people’s ideas were completely discarded in favor of the narrative. The only people who do this sort of thing are on the right wing, and are clearly dangerous terrorists with not a lick of empathy or ethics in their body. That’s what the media wants you to think. They want you to unperson these people to the extent that you don’t need any further information but what the media tells you about them, and any personal research into the matter is discouraged at best. Even the fact that I didn’t spend this whole article talking about how these people were scum is probably going to cause a lot of people to hate not only myself but the outlet I write for, painting us as nothing more than terrorist-sympathizing evildoers bent on chaos and destruction. But the fact is, the US media, and any media which follows its model, has a long history of running narratives that benefit them, even at the expense of reality, truth, justice, fact, and logic. And most people will simply believe them, no matter which side they’re on, in an attempt to avoid seeming so out of the ordinary that they would also be considered lumped in with “those evildoers”.

It’s the same reason anybody not wearing a mask in public is automatically treated as a lesser being, and why many people are suddenly using this is an excuse to basically bully people, treating them as second class citizens for not simply falling in line. And that’s just one layer, with a whole host of other social control mechanisms by which considering conformity a virtue has distorted the alleged “American ethics” into a vain shadow of its former self, were they ever even there to begin with. And many other examples of this exist, not the least of which are mainstream narratives or around various conspiracies, various government actions, the way the system is run, and a variety of other things, all pushing the idea that not listening to those in power is some kind of sin. And the people are going along with it in droves, repeating the narrative that anybody who hates the government is obviously a right wing extremist working with terrorists or a variety of other nasty things. This unfortunate set of circumstances leads to the alienation of anyone supporting freedom in any sort of radical way, and leaves room only for the moderates in the discussion, thus creating an environment that perpetuates the status quo under the illusion of safety and democracy. It’s why voting and supporting the state are counterintuitive wastes of energy, because no matter who gets in, the only people allowed to say anything or the people who won’t fundamentally change anything in any sort of dramatic way. And the fact is, most people like it that way. Because it’s familiar, and they don’t have to do a whole lot of thinking, or make any radical changes to the way their life is managed.

But the fact is, this kind of tactic could be used against anyone who wanted libertarian unity, because the people who want libertarian unity are the most powerful people against the state. Willing to work with people with whom they don’t entirely share ideological parity, us “bottom unity” immunity activists now have demonstrable proof that we will repeatedly and unquestioningly be lumped in with one side or the other, to fit whatever prevailing narrative whichever side wants us to fit, despite the truth of the matter being that we are neither left nor right.

To be honest, seeing this sort of coverage of these people that I’ve spoken to before in a positive light scares me a little. Not only are people believing the government narrative, but that government narrative has now twice been used in an attempt to smear people who are interested in uniting against the state as what amount to Nazis. This nigh-Orwellian attempt to associate those with the most power against the state along with those who want the state to have the most power is transparent, yet somehow elusive to most people. It shows the power of the media to control the narrative, and prevent the people from forming their own opinions, and not everybody is willing to investigate these sorts of issues as thoroughly as this piece does. But this doesn’t stop the state from attempting to get exactly what they want out of the issue – blind compliance. And a whole nation weaponized against libertarian unity will be weaponized by authoritarians, in their usual lockstep to dominate the common person by any means necessary, with most common people denouncing anyone the media tells them to as soon as anything is said about them.

Konkin’s “Alliance of the Libertarian Left” and other sorts of coalitionist organizations are all under threat. This is why a key step of the real fascism we face is control of the media, so that a prevailing narrative can keep the people in lock step before any force is even necessary to employ, so that any small group of opposition can be stomped out with limited manpower. This should be a concern to everyone who supports freedom in any capacity. I know it’s a concern to me.

These cases are cautionary points in that regard, whereby people with no evidence, but with the sanctified “credentials” of established media, can accuse people of being part of some sort of right wing plot, even if they are neither right wing, nor in a plot, and even if they didn’t do anything at all against any valid moral code, such as the unnamed person who had his photo taken while in possession of things that US government doesn’t like (like the arms he allegedly has the right to bear); they can still be targeted by organizations simply for some alleged group membership. This collectivism leads to a slow rot in the consciousness of civilization, and will eventually result in the destruction of anything that could remotely be considered a free country, all in the name of preserving the status quo, and making sure that the small handful of people who benefit from this system are still doing so.

So, all I ask you to do is your own research, and enough of it to come to a sound, ethical conclusion; and if you’re too busy to do that and look at a variety of evidence with eyes unclouded by statism, then maybe refrain from having a public opinion on matters at all, and re-employ the old powerful phrase, “I don’t know”. It could save a life, and if done in significant enough numbers, it could also save the human race, because continually seating power and narrative authority to the state, with its monopoly on violence in ever increasing strength of arms, is a good way to encourage a bloody and brutal Armageddon. Here’s to doing what we can to get in the way of that outcome.

In the end, all we’re gonna have is each other, the state having quelled every rebellion they desire to quell, and the people having been divided, brutalized, and slaughtered, until they have submitted. If all it takes to lose our support is the media stating that somebody did something heinous, we’ve already lost. We must reclaim our dignity and our grasp on the truth, because the post-truth world is not a world any of us should want to live in.

So think for yourself, not because some pundit told you something. Remember how dangerous that is.