Categories
Updates

Weekly Update: 26 Oct 2020


In the third MW weekly news round-up, a roundup of coverage of MilitiaWatch/ACLED’s election violence report, updates on last week’s stories, and some new stories from the week. These new happenings are then related to reading within the MW archives and around the web. Here’s the weekly(ish) update for 26 October 2020.


Norm Olsen, of the notorious Michigan Militia, denounced the Wolverine Watchmen militia’s plot

Olsen now lives in Alaska and started a new, non-Michigan project there years ago. However, he did tell journalists that he was sympathetic to anger against Wolverine Watchmen militia’s target, Michigan Governor Whitmer.


The American Patriot Council, an off-shoot from Michigan re-open protests taken national, looked to hold a 40-location national “Freedom March” series of rallies,

(instead, they held fewer than a dozen)

Ryan Santistevan wrote up a good brief on the organization, available here.


MilitiaWatch + ACLED release risk assessment report

Our report, drawn from data from the past five months, the literature on elections violence, and analysis based on knowledge of right-wing networked violence, we identified five high-risk states and five moderate-risk states. Read the report on ACLED’s site, here. Militia groups covered in the report include the III%, covered extensively here. (Please indulge for a moment, MW rarely gets this sort of coverage)

The report has been covered, for example in:
Local outlets, including:

Other stories:

NPR did a profile of Idaho III%er and GOP State Senate candidate, Eric Parker. Parker was kicked off of Facebook during the summer purges and was highly involved in Bundy Ranch organizing.

Michigan sheriffs/police have indicated they will refuse to enforce bans on guns at polling places this season, despite the alleged planned kidnapping of Michigan’s governor.