WASHINGTON — Some supporters of a trucker convoy of self-described patriots headed toward the U.S. border with Mexico have expressed violent rhetoric before planned events on Saturday.
Organizers of the group are stressing nonviolence, as they struggle to organize a convoy of the size they bragged about and assure their conspiracy-minded fellow right-wingers that this isn’t all just a big government setup.
The “Take Our Border Back” events have been advertised online as “PEACEFUL ASSEMBLY & PRAYER.” The organizers, who refer to themselves as “We the People” and “God’s Army,” have put out a call for “all active and retired law enforcement and military, Veterans, Mama Bears, elected officials, business owners, ranchers, truckers, bikers, media, and LAW ABIDING, freedom-loving Americans” to join them at events planned for three locations on Saturday: Eagles Pass, Texas; Yuma, Arizona; and San Ysidro, California.
Some right-wing media outlets have boosted organizers’ claims of 700,000 expected participants on Saturday and thousands of trucks in the convoy, but images and livestreams from the convoy have indicated much smaller numbers. One video posted Wednesday afternoon showed a few dozen vehicles and a few semi-trucks.
“It’s hard to predict how big it’s going to be,” Scot Saks, one of the leaders of the group, told NBC News.
Social media postings in response to the events, which were reviewed by NBC News, include calls for civil war and violence, and the events have been advertised on white nationalist and gun forums.
“All Governor Abbott has to do is call for the citizens and we are armed and ready,” one commenter on a video about the events wrote. Another poster said that convoy members should bring their “kits so if stuff goes down you will be able to protect yourselves and help out.” Another social media user posted a meme about “undocumented and untraceable” weapons and a note that they were ready to join this “final battle for Americans.”
Saks, who is from California, said that the group was not looking for confrontations with the government or migrants and that anyone suggesting otherwise on their Telegram channels was not listening to what he said was a clear message coming from the top.
“I think they’re idiots,” Saks said of people posting calls for violence. “They’re stupid. They’re stupid Americans, they’re stupid people. I mean, it’s clear if you go to our website with the messages, these are peaceful assemblies.”
Saturday’s planned events come amid anger on the right after the Supreme Court last week authorized Border Patrol agents to remove razor wire installed on the border by the state of Texas, which the federal government said was preventing agents from being able to reach migrants in distress. The White House and Senate are also currently negotiating bipartisan legislation to impose tougher immigration and asylum laws. President Joe Biden said he would shut down the border when it is “overwhelmed” if he’s given new authority in that deal.
The first convoy to leave Virginia on Monday got off to a bit of a rough start, livestreams posted by individuals embedded in the convoy show. A Wired reporter described the convoy’s first day as “a complete mess“ as it made its way to Florida. As Vice first reported, many potential supporters are suspicious of the event, posting on social media that they believe it is some sort of government setup. That’s been a major theme of conservative events in the aftermath of Jan. 6, with millions of Donald Trump supporters believing false conspiracy theories that the Capitol attack was a setup by the FBI or the “deep state” to entrap right-wing Americans.
Still, Saturday’s events have been publicized by Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, and gotten a boost from former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
“Where are the men of Texas? Why aren’t they protecting their state and the nation?” Carlson, who has 11.2 million followers on X, asked in a post on the website, formerly known as Twitter. He went on to interview one of the leaders of the “Take Our Border Back” convoy, Dr. Pete Chambers.
Chambers served in the Texas Army National Guard at the southern border but has said he left the military in 2022 after nearly 40 years because of his opposition to the Covid-19 vaccine mandates. He quickly became a cause célèbre on the right, appearing on dozens of podcasts and panels where he claimed he had been permanently injured by the Covid vaccine, that he had persuaded thousands of soldiers at the Texas-Mexico border to refuse the shots and that he was allegedly punished for his activism. Chambers has also said he treated soldiers with Covid with ivermectin and hydroxychloride, medications shown to be ineffective against the viral disease.
Beyond vaccine misinformation, Chambers has promoted several other medical and government conspiracy theories, including that so-called globalists are planning another pandemic, that 5G cellular technology is a government-weaponized threat to human existence and that genetically modified foods are part of a plot by “cabals” and “elites” to change human DNA and control the population.
Chambers was also featured in the viral anti-vaccine film, “Died Suddenly,” as a whistleblower for revealing what he claimed was a spike in adverse vaccine reactions among the military and a government plot to hide those injuries from the public, claims that have been thoroughly debunked.
After his retirement, Chambers said he recruited other retired military members to join his militia group, “The Remnant A-Team,” and patrol the southern border. The group, described by Chambers as a neighborhood watch, has been funded in part by the America Project, a conservative election-denial group that sponsors and advocates for partisan audits of the 2020 election and for changes to future elections based on unproven conspiracy theories.
Saks, one of the team members, said he’s hopeful “thousands” of people will show up at the three events, and said they’re “very well organized.” He called it a “grassroots” movement led by podcasters, bloggers and social media influencers.
Saks said anyone who starts trouble at the events will simply be asked to leave, noting that two of the three rallies will be held on private property, while the one in San Ysidro is in a public park. And he expressed support for conspiracy theories that non-Trump supporters, either federal agents or antifa, caused the violence at the Capitol attack, saying there were “parallels to J6 here.”
“If you don’t think there were people infiltrating and subverting, you haven’t watched all the footage I have,” Saks said of Jan. 6.
“It’s obvious what I mean,” Saks said. “I’ll let you figure that out.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
