Armed Right Wingers Thick On The Ground In ND Oil Patch; De Facto Backup For Police, Military
The Three Percenters, a loosely organized group of far-right militants, appear to have established a significant presence in North Dakota’s Bakken oilfield, one of the most productive oilfields in the nation. “There is a lot of membership in the oil and gas industry up there,” says Matt Marshall, a Three Percenter running for state legislature in Washington. “The fact that you have a lot of Three Percenters working in the oilfields of North Dakota is not surprising.”
The Three Percenters are so named for the dubious historical claim that only three percent of American colonists took up arms in the Revolutionary War. Their adherents have frequently been involved with incidents of armed protests, hate speech, and threatening behavior across the U.S., and the group’s members have shown up prominently at recent protests related to both pandemic response measures and police brutality.
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en pointed to a number of issues that promoted a linkup between the fossil fuels industry and the far right. Each group favors a hands-off approach to government meddling and regulation. And in a trend that has become more pronounced under the Trump administration, with its constant mention of the nation’s newfound fracking-led oil and gas dominance, support of the fossil fuels industry has been promoted as patriotic duty. Oil and gas industry workers are made to feel they are part of a great mission, says Sen, and those who critique them, such as pipeline protesters or climate marchers, are sworn enemies, or even terrorists. This enables the federal government to place individuals on watchlists and, as seen with Indigenous-led protests at Standing Rock and elsewhere has helped to encourage a dangerous operating environment in which federal law enforcement has relied on outside groups, including actual militia members, to help with security work and law enforcement.
“As we head toward a renewable world and fossil fuels become less competitive, it makes perfect sense that the global elite and fossil fuels industry will turn to the far right, whether indirectly or directly, for protection,” says Sen. “The fossil fuels industry is going to need escalating levels of subsidies to survive, and one form of subsidy is this massive tax-funded private security force.” Perhaps nowhere has the use of mercenary-like private security forces been more heavily employed than against Indigenous communities in the United States. Michael German, the former FBI agent and security expert, says this is already occurring. “What we saw in North Dakota during Standing Rock is groups organized as professional companies doing security work for law enforcement agencies,” says German. “This is quite troubling. Furthermore, there have been situations, such as happened at a rally in 2017 in Portland, where militia members have actually been caught on film helping Department of Homeland Security officials arresting counter protesters.”
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https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/07/21/three-percenters-militia-bakken-oil-oneok-domestic-terrorism
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