West Michigan Far Right Watch for the week of December 1 – 12 : Patriots and misinformation, religious services in a pandemic and Michigan legislator legal maneuvers

Welcome to the next installment of West Michigan Far Right Watch, where we keep tabs on the far right in this area and provide a summary of what they are up to and what kind of messages they are promoting in this community. As a matter of clarification, when we say the Far Right, we mean those in the streets who fight to defend White Supremacy, those who promote far right ideology, an those with political and economic power.

We have three examples for this installment. The first example is The first example comes to us from the American Patriot Council (APC), which continues to use misinformation to rally their supporters. In an article they posted on December 9, entitled, With Trump Second Term Looming, Democrat Plan B Begins To Emerge, the APC claims that State Representative Cynthia Johnson made threats against Trump supporters in a viral video. The APC fails to acknowledge that days before Rep. Johnson made the video, she had received numerous phone calls from Trump supporters, most of which were racist in nature and with at least one person saying she should be lynched. 

The APC article also states that there is a wave of overwhelming evidence that the Democrats committed voter fraud. The article posted on the American Patriot Council’s site offers NO documentation or examples of the supposed evidence that the Democrats committed voter fraud, instead they quote one of the two “founding fathers” of the APC who says, “if they can’t steal it they’ll create massive civil unrest.”

The second example comes to us from the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. In an article posted by their publication editor, Rev. Ben Johnson, he celebrates the Supreme Court ruling on allowing faith communities to continue to gather, even in the midst of a pandemic. The Supreme Court was hearing cases after lawsuits were filed in New York. The Acton Institute has been critical of any government limitation on religious worship during the pandemic, so this article is consistent with their stance on this issue. 

Within the article, the Acton writer cites several sources that are referred to as First Amendment litigators. The groups they cite are First Liberty Institute, which is a Right Wing Christian Law firm, with endorsements from the likes of Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee. The other source cited in the Acton article comes from the Alliance Defending Freedom, another Far Right legal team that the Southern Poverty Law Center refers to as a Hate Group. Lastly, the Alliance Defending Freedom was obtained a few years ago to defend Christian adoption agencies in Michigan who were denying same sex couples from adopting.

Our third, and last example, is something we reported on a few days ago, where Michigan legislators, both federal and state, signed on to the Texas lawsuit claiming that there was voter fraud in several states, including Michigan. Read about the details here.