Latest nonsense from American Patriot Council borders on comical narcissism

One would think that after last weekend, the American Patriot Council would want to write about the so-called Freedom March they held in Allendale, Michigan. They didn’t, probably because once again they were out numbered by counter-protesters, and they failed to rally their base, even though they had been planning these Freedom Marches since August.

Instead of writing about their Freedom March, which was essentially a pro-Trump rally, the American Patriot Council founding fathers decided to write about their “Criminal Watch List.”

The American Patriot Council has now decided to add Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to their Criminal Watch List, because, as they claim, “Facebook has been deleting conservatives and conservative stories in recent weeks.” 

First, even to the average Facebook user, it seems pretty clear that “conservative stories” are in abundance. In fact, the Tech Transparency Project did a study earlier this year about White Supremacist groups using Facebook. Here is what they found:

• Of the 221 designated white supremacist organizations, more than half—51%, or 113 groups—had a presence on Facebook.

• Those organizations are associated with a total of 153 Facebook Pages and four Facebook Groups. Roughly one third of the organizations (34) had two or more Pages or Groups on Facebook. Some had Pages that have been active on the platform for a decade.

• Many of the white supremacist Pages identified by TTP were created by Facebook itself. Facebook auto-generated them as business pages when someone listed a white supremacist or neo-Nazi organization as their employer.

• Facebook’s “Related Pages” feature often directed users visiting white supremacist Pages to other extremist or far-right content, raising concerns that the platform is contributing to radicalization.

• One of Facebook’s strategies for combatting extremism—redirecting users who search for terms associated with white supremacy or hate groups to the Page for “Life After Hate,” an organization that promotes tolerance—only worked in 6% (14) of the 221 searches for white supremacist organizations.

• In addition to the hate groups designated by SPLC and ADL, TTP found white supremacist organizations that Facebook had explicitly banned in the past. One known as “Right Wing Death Squad” had at least three Pages on Facebook, all created prior to Facebook’s ban.

Ryan Kelley and Jason Howland, both founding fathers of the American Patriot Council, say that they will be contacting the FBI and the Department of Justice to make formal complaints against anyone who is on their “Criminal Watch List.” The article they posted on October 27th, states that they have already filed complaints against Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. That’s interesting, because it seems that the only recent thing we have heard about the FBI and Gov. Whitmer, was the failed plot to kidnap her by a group of domestic terrorists, some of which have connections to Ryan Kelley and the American Patriot Council.

Ryan Kelley is also quoted in the article as saying that he got some, “criticism recently by far left Antifa and BLM groups for the saving of an historical statue in his home town.”  Interesting that he refers to the statue as historical, when in fact it is essentially a Confederate statue that people have been protesting against for months. 

Lastly, the American Patriot Council made the claim that the media around the country is noticing their “Criminal Watch List.” The media around the country link they are referring to is a small TV station in Maine, which featured maybe 12 people participating in an American Patriot Council Freedom March.

It would seem that the American Patriot Council is a bit full of themselves, almost bordering on comical narcissism.