The Satanic Temple, Religious Freedom, Legal, White Supremacists, New Mexico Cult Series
Newsweek: Satanic Temple Challenges 18 States' Abortion Laws With Religious Exemption Claim
"The Satanic Temple, a national religious rights organization with chapters in 21 states, has recently erected two billboards in Texas and Florida encouraging followers to challenge state restrictions on abortions conducted during the first trimester by claiming that the restrictions violate their religious beliefs as Satanists. Over 18 states have such restrictions."
" ... People are splintering off into these more fringe platforms that essentially have no content moderation or threat-monitoring capability whatsoever," said Cindy Otis, a former CIA analyst who tracks disinformation at the Alethea Group.Shortly after the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, Facebook and Twitter kicked off Trump and cracked down on groups involved in organizing the insurrection. By now, many of those users — and those who sympathize with them — have found alternative platforms on which to spread their messages.Some groups Facebook banned for spreading false claims about election fraud and organizing "Stop the Steal" rallies sent their members to MeWe, Gab and Parler, another alternative social app. Parler recently went down after Amazon refused to host it, saying it had too much violent content.MeWe's Weinstein resists the comparison to Parler or Gab, which tout themselves as free-speech sites. For one thing, he says, MeWe is serious about putting limits on what people can say."I don't like sites where anything goes," Weinstein said. "I think they're disgusting. Good people right and left and middle can't handle 'anything goes.' We don't want to be around hate speech. We don't want to be around violence inciters."Nor is MeWe meant to be a right-wing "echo chamber," the CEO said.While MeWe does have rules, they are more lax than Facebook and Twitter. For example, both of the big platforms banned the baseless Qanon conspiracy theory because it has led to real-world violence, including at the Capitol. MeWe has not taken that blanket approach; it says it removes accounts and content that violate its rules against inciting violence, hate speech, harassment, bullying and illegal activity."
"During the past two years, U.S. counterterrorism officials held meetings with their European counterparts to discuss an emerging threat: right-wing terror groups becoming increasingly global in their reach.American neo-Nazis were traveling to train and fight with militias in the Ukraine. There were suspected links between U.S. extremists and the Russian Imperial Movement, a white supremacist group that was training foreigners in its St. Petersburg compounds. A gunman accused of killing 23 people at an El Paso Walmart in 2019 had denounced a "Hispanic invasion" and praised a white supremacist who killed 51 people at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and who had been inspired by violent American and Italian racists.But the efforts to improve transatlantic cooperation against the threat ran into a recurring obstacle. During talks and communications, senior Trump administration officials steadfastly refused to use the term "right-wing terrorism," causing disputes and confusion with the Europeans, who routinely use the phrase, current and former European and U.S. officials told ProPublica. Instead, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security referred to "racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism," while the State Department chose "racially or ethnically motivated terrorism.""We did have problems with the Europeans," one national security official said. "They call it right-wing terrorism and they were angry that we didn't. There was a real aversion to using that term on the U.S. side. The aversion came from political appointees in the Trump administration. We very quickly realized that if people talked about right-wing terrorism, it was a nonstarter with them."The U.S. response to the globalization of the far-right threat has been slow, scattered and politicized, U.S. and European counterterrorism veterans and experts say. Whistleblowers and other critics have accused DHS leaders of downplaying the threat of white supremacy and slashing a unit dedicated to fighting domestic extremism. DHS has denied those accusations.In 2019, a top FBI official told Congress the agency devoted only about 20% of its counterterrorism resources to the domestic threat. Nonetheless, some FBI field offices focus primarily on domestic terrorism.Former counterterrorism officials said the president's politics made their job harder. The disagreement over what to call the extremists was part of a larger concern about whether the administration was committed to fighting the threat."The rhetoric at the White House, anybody watching the rhetoric of the president, this was discouraging people in government from speaking out," said Jason Blazakis, who ran a State Department counterterrorism unit from 2008 to 2018. "The president and his minions were focused on other threats."Other former officials disagreed. Federal agencies avoided the term "right-wing terrorism" because they didn't want to give extremists legitimacy by placing them on the political spectrum, or to fuel the United States' intense polarization, said Christopher K. Harnisch, the former deputy coordinator for countering violent extremism in the State Department's counterterrorism bureau. Some causes espoused by white supremacists, such as using violence to protect the environment, are not regarded as traditionally right-wing ideology, said Harnisch, who stepped down this week."
" ... [M]embers of the production crew and location scouts for a television show in pre-production were roaming the city of Belen looking for some prime real estate to film a new television series.Kim Graham, the owner of Belen-based production company What Are The Odds, brought Brenden Fehr, one of the show's executive producers to Belen to find locations that evoked just the right small-town vibe.The show, "Behind The Yellow House," is based on the true story of a New Mexico cult, a group of witches, that still exists and practices to some extent to this day, Fehr said."The show tells the story of Maggie, this young girl who is the chosen one. She is raised by her grandmother, who is the leader of the cult," Fehr said.The woman's story is filled with dark rituals and abuse, ranging from human sacrifice to incest, he said, but she manages to escape and thrive."There are a lot of dark things in this show, things she was thrust into, but she escaped," he said.Fehr, who is best known for his role as Michael Guerin in the original "Roswell" TV series that ran from 1999 to 2002, will play a small role in the new show, that of Sheriff Brown."He's investigating this cult, so he's on the outside and really doesn't know what's going on," Fehr said. "It's a small town with a lot of secrets."While the show is based on a true story of a cult in New Mexico, and the woman known as Maggie is collaborating with creators, Fehr was clear it wasn't about Belen."This happened in the late 1960s and we're looking for locations that still evoke that era," he said. "Projects with bigger budgets can just build a set. We need places that already have that look or can be achieved with a few changes."While they were in town, the group visited H.T. Jaramillo School and the Belen Police Department as possible filming locations.Fehr said they really liked Belen's "look.""It's smaller, has more of a community feel, where everybody knows everybody else," he said. "Other places might have something similar but there are tall buildings and have an urban feel."While the show will delve into the dark rituals and abuse that happened in the woods "behind the yellow house," Fehr said he wants it to serve as a source of help to people experiencing abuse and other situations.At the end of every show, there will be information and resources about sex trafficking and child abuse, he said."
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