Conspiracy theorists and white supremacists are targeting cell phone towers


In testimony before Congress, the director of the FBI Christopher Wray warned of the rising danger of domestic extremist violence that he says is metastasizing across the country. For the longest time dating back to the J. Edgar Hoover era, the FBI focused much of its efforts on infiltrating antiwar groups and others that were largely peaceful and engaged in promoting civil rights and on behalf of minorities and women, and tended to ignore the threat posed by white nationalists and violent militias. It has taken the Trump era of supporting and inciting those groups for them to wake up to the reality of where the real danger of violence lies.

The insurrection on January 6th was just one manifestation of this trend. Ken Klippenstein reports on other actions that some groups extremist groups are up to.

AS THE BIDEN administration turns its attention to an infrastructure system beset with problems, a strange new issue has emerged: conspiracy theorists. That’s according to a detailed intelligence report, produced by the New York Police Department and obtained by The Intercept, which finds that cellphone towers and other critical infrastructure have become an attractive target for conspiracy theorists, especially in the weeks and months following the presidential election.

Conspiracy theorists, joined by far-right white supremacist groups, “increasingly target critical infrastructure to incite fear, disrupt essential services, and cause economic damage with the United States and abroad,” the report states. Blaming “the current contentious domestic political environment,” the document, issued on January 20 by the NYPD Intelligence Bureau and marked as “law enforcement sensitive,” describes a rash of attacks, some of which involved strikingly sophisticated planning.

So why attack infrastructure and cell phone towers in particular?

Many far-right groups adhere to the “accelerationist” principle, which maintains that hastening the collapse of society will bring about political change. Targeting critical infrastructure, which impedes the state’s ability to function, is a common insurgency tactic used by militant groups worldwide.

5G conspiracy theorists believe that the new technology gave rise to the coronavirus pandemic, with many convinced that the electromagnetic waves put out by 5G towers harm the human immune system. As a result, there were reportedly over 30 attacks on cell towers in London in April 2020 alone. In May of last year, the Department of Homeland Security issued its own intelligence report warning of “calls for violence against telecommunications workers” due to conspiracy theories tying the spread of Covid-19 to 5G technology, according to ABC News.

So you know who may be to blame if you lose your cell phone service.

Destabilizing a society by crippling the infrastructure in the hope that it will lead to a widespread uprising is an idea that has been around for a long time. But for success, such a strategy requires other elements to be in place, such as widespread dissatisfaction with the existing system, especially among the security forces, that will lead many to defect. I just don’t see that condition existing right now in the US.

What it may lead to is having Congress give the security forces even more surveillance powers than the vast array they already possess.

Comments

  1. says

    The whole 5g conspiracy is mind-blowingly stupid. US telcos can’t actually provide 5g service and are marketing their LTE as 5g. Meanwhile, it’s a conspiracy?!

  2. KG says

    But for success, such a strategy requires other elements to be in place, such as widespread dissatisfaction with the existing system, especially among the security forces, that will lead many to defect. I just don’t see that condition existing right now in the US.

    With a majority of Republican voters still claiming to believe the election was stolen, the party elite having apparently abandoned attempts to appeal to a majority in favour of systematic gerrymandering and vote-suppression, and numerous reports of far right infiltration of the military and domination of the police? I think you’re too sanguine.

  3. raven says

    The connection between electromagnetic waves and carbon based life forms is…well, there isn’t any such connection.
    Viruses existed long before we even knew what electromagnetic radiation was.

  4. sonofrojblake says

    “The connection between electromagnetic waves and carbon based life forms is…well, there isn’t any such connection”

    And just like that, the entire tanning bed industry imploded. Good news about skin cancer being entirely imaginary though.

  5. nifty says

    And many organisms have sensory systems attuned to specific EM wavelengths, and photosynthesis occurs. We also use EM to help produce vitamin D. However, any connection at the wavelengths used at cell phone frequencies seems pretty much crap.

  6. Lassi Hippeläinen says

    ‘Many far-right groups adhere to the “accelerationist” principle, which maintains that hastening the collapse of society will bring about political change.’
    So the right-wingers have joined forces with the anarchists?

  7. Rob Grigjanis says

    robertbaden @6: What gets you there is electric current, not em radiation.

    Anyway, I took raven’s point to be about the nonsense linking 5G to the coronavirus.

  8. Marja Erwin says

    I can’t say there aren’t any accelerationists in some anarchist spaces, maybe primitivist ones, but I don’t think there are many.

  9. file thirteen says

    @sonofrojblake #4

    Good news about skin cancer being entirely imaginary though.

    Bad news when we all froze to death.

  10. file thirteen says

    @Lassi #7

    So the right-wingers have joined forces with the anarchists?

    Basically. Idk, remind me what the differences between libertarianism and anarchism are again…

  11. Lofty says

    The point about phone towers is also that the average truck load of right wing dimwits find them easy to identify and destroy. Picking on a military target is much harder.

  12. jrkrideau says

    @ 1 marcus
    The whole 5g conspiracy is mind-blowingly stupid. US telcos can’t actually provide 5g service and are marketing their LTE as 5g. Meanwhile, it’s a conspiracy?!

    Of course it is. It just might not be the conspiracy that you are thinking about. The arrest of Meng Wanzhou looks like a conspiracy to me.

    Note the conspiracy gets very complicated but her actual arrest is not.

  13. Marja Erwin says

    Anarchists oppose rulership/domination, and seek to limit hierarchies. Bakunin, for example, wrote that any subordination must be temporary, limited, and above all voluntary. Anarchists tend to oppose capitalism, because the class hierarchy is persistent, not temporary, and pervasive, not voluntary, though it is an improvement over feudalism and slavery.

    Libertarians-- that varies. Libertarian socialists may be anarchists, council communists, or radical-liberal and radical democratic Marxists, Narodniki, etc. Libertarian capitalists may be… anything out to neo-Nazis. Because they’ll appropriate everything.

  14. file thirteen says

    It wasn’t a serious question Marja, but the correct answer is “bugger-all”.

  15. Matt G says

    When some British nuts destroyed a 5G cell tower last year, I thought: Finally! A way in which the British are clearly stupider than us Americans! Guess I was wrong about that….

  16. file thirteen says

    John, the (sad?) truth is that not even practioners of anarchism can agree on what anarchism is (it’s similar to xtianity in that respect). As for libertarianism, iirc up until the middle of last century it meant the same thing. I visited a libertarian web page recently where, while describing what being libertarian means, they state that Bakunin was “considered an anarchist” (the inference being that Bakunin was, to them, what they want to call libertarian). But perhaps “no true” libertarian would say that.

    I’ll stick with “bugger-all” myself, but sure, ymmv.

  17. Marja Erwin says

    I should clarify that it’s the Nazis who will appropriate everything. And they have tried to appropriate both.

    But the Nazis haven’t had much success appropriating anarchism.

    And the Nazis have had some success appropriating libertarianism, largely because some libertarian capitalists opposed civil rights laws more than they opposed Jim Crow, Rothbard cozied up to the Republicans, Hoppe defended monarchism, anti-lgbt and anti-immigrant crackdowns, etc.

  18. KG says

    I’ll stick with “bugger-all” myself, but sure, ymmv. -- file thirteen@18

    OK, you stick with your ignorance, no-one can force you to do otherwise.

  19. xohjoh2n says

    Anarchist: We can all do whatever we like.

    Libertarian: I can do whatever I like and I’ll hire a bunch of thugs to make sure you can’t.

  20. KG says

    Well, file thirteen@21, the difference is that -- as an ex-anarchist myself -- I have actually read quite a bit by and about anarchists. It’s quite evident you haven’t.

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