Former Proud Boy on How the Right Wing Hacks Brains

When you go into a rural county or township in support of a clean energy project, most often there will be an organized faction of angry, misinformed, social media activated and enraged local citizens there, who have been made to believe that clean energy is somehow a threat to them.
It’s not surprising, given the 24 hour, 7 day barrage of media that has been directed at them for decades.
The people that are doing that directing know what they are about.
Above, excerpt of an interview with Jason Van Tatenhove, formerly a communications specialist for the Oath Keepers, interviewed by Cult behavior expert Steven Hassan PhD.
Full interview here.

PBS:

Jason Van Tatenhove, a former spokesperson for the far-right paramilitary group the Oath Keepers, whose members were involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection, testified at the Jan. 6 committee’s seventh public hearing on July 12 where he called the attack an “armed revolution.”

Van Tatenhove handled the media operations for the Oath Keepers’ for about two years, starting in 2014. He told Denver’s Fox 31 he was not connected to the group at the time of the attack on the Capitol and has since “purged” his connections to extremism.

Wikipedia:

Fifth-generation warfare (5GW) is warfare that is conducted primarily through non-kinetic military action, such as social engineering, misinformation, cyberattacks, along with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and fully autonomous systems. Fifth generation warfare has been described by Daniel Abbot as a war of “information and perception

Dave Troy on X:

There is a logical fallacy at the heart of the Epstein files focus: that anything revealed there would now have consequences. It is clear that the Epstein story includes abuse, corruption, undue influence, and, it seems, capture of the presidency by foreign adversaries.
But this is known, and common knowledge. Yes, there is more to know, and it should be pursued. But the marginal gap between what is currently known and what could be known is likely not sufficient to produce consequences.
First, there is a conscious effort by Trump and Putin to overwhelm events through accelerating, cascading chain reactions. This makes any sort of response all but impossible (see: OODA loops, 5GW etc).
Second, the logic of “exposure” requires that we still have functional institutions that can observe, act on, and adjudicate consequences that would come from new information. All evidence is that our institutions have collapsed under in-group/out-group antipathy and chaos. This is a solution suitable to 1997, or perhaps 2006.

That old world is gone. We are in a different mode today, one ruled by the hard logic of force and speed. “Distractions” don’t exist because “attention” can’t produce consequences when institutional gears are stripped. We are but expressing nostalgia for another era.
Leak the Epstein files; expose the truth. Let the chips fall where they may. But don’t under any circumstances expect them to be a check on what’s happening now, before our eyes. The only thing that can stop what’s unfolding now is if people of conscience intervene.
That means Congress (you can help force that by becoming a nuisance) and the 25th Amendment. Both incredible longshots, but wars have been won on such improbable gambits. But whatever you do, don’t expect our current dire situation to be solved by the release of redacted PDF files that somehow lead to years of institutional gear-churning. Let the historians take care of history. We, you, us — we need to take care of the present.