Geezers Charged With Terror Plot Inspired By Fox News 'Expert'
The Year of Rage is moving along nicely: The four elderly Georgia men arrested for their alleged plot to kill a bunch of federal employees and simultaneously attack a half-dozen cities with poison and some other Rage Batman stuff were all inspired by a Fox News personality's insanely inspirational novel about killing all the evil gubmint peoples. One interesting thing about mass worldwide insurrections is that all points on the ideological spectrum are eventually represented, which is exactly what we're seeing in the three-year era (so far) that future alien historians will refer to as "The End of These Goddamned People."
Four senior citizens will appear in front of a federal judge in Georgia today after telling undercover informants about plans to attack federal buildings with explosives and a biological toxin.
The men named in the charging documents, Frederick Thomas, 73, of Cleveland, Ga., and Toccoa, Ga., residents Dan Roberts, 67, Ray H. Adams, 65, and Samuel J. Crump, 68, were all members of a fringe militia organization, according to investigators.
They called themselves "the covert group," and met several times throughout the year to discuss killing federal employees with rifles, explosives and ricin, a dangerous toxin that can be extracted from castor bean seeds using acetone and lye.
The four geezers, all reportedly retired from government agencies or contractors including the U.S. Navy, the USDA and the Centers for Disease Control, allegedly dreamed up their terror spree as a "bucket list," meaning a list of fun things to do in the last years of life. But what inspired the apparently well-behaved Southern Old Folk? Oh, some shitty book about people killing their government leaders, the standard paperback "patriot fiction" that also inspired Timothy McVeigh. But this time, the "paperback" was an "online novel." So, futuristic?
Fox News reported on the arrests too, with a wink and a nod, but the Fox News announcers decided not to mention that the author of the terror fiction is a constant presence on Fox News, where he serves as an "expert" to talk about how Obama is a criminal.
Media Matters has this update:
Fox News is now actively concealing a link between an Alabama-based blogger repeatedly featured on the network as an expert and allegations of a domestic terrorist plot. This morning on America's Newsroom, Fox News ran an extensive report on yesterday's arrest of four Georgia men accused of plotting an attack on federal employees and U.S. citizens using explosives, guns, and the biological toxin ricin. At the end of the segment, correspondent Jonathan Serrie pointed out that one of the defendants "allegedly cited the online novel Absolved, which discusses small groups of citizens attacking U.S. officials," with the defendant allegedly "saying that the attacks would be based on events in that novel."
[...]
But Fox's report neglected to mention the allegedly inspirational novel's author, who is no stranger to Fox viewers. Indeed, the author, Mike Vanderboegh, has been mainstreamed by the network, which has repeatedly featured him as an expert on the ATF's failed Operation Fast and Furious. Fox has identified Vanderboegh as an "online journalist" and an "authority on the Fast and Furious investigation," and has consistently failed to acknowledge his extremist views, actions, and affiliations.
Haha, remember when "online journalist" was an insult? (It still is.)
Anyway, the old dudez were reportedly trying to make ricin, and then spreading it on the interstates we guess, and then assassinating a lot of state and federal government officials, and also killing a bunch of corporate CEOs, and all kinds of stuff that fits right in with the General Insanity of the times. They are supposedly part of a secret militia called "The Covert" or something. And now the FBI is saying they sure don't want to get in the way of anyone's personal beliefs about wanting to kill the government and the corporates, but when it gets to the point of actually trying to do it, there are arrests and then Fox News acts like it hasn't created this whole scene. [ AJC / Media Matters / ABC News ]