Where'd He Get Radicalized?

[Content Note: White supremacy; anti-Blackness; terrorism.]

Care of Lori Pilger at the Lincoln Journal Star, here is a story that, for some mysterious (cough) reason, isn't running 24/7 on the cable news networks: FBI Accuses White Supremacist of Terror Attack on Amtrak Train in Rural Nebraska.

The FBI says an armed 26-year-old Missouri man who breached a secured area to stop an Amtrak train in southwest Nebraska in October has links to a white supremacist group and expressed an interest in "killing black people," according to court documents unsealed Wednesday.

Taylor Michael Wilson, of St. Charles, Missouri, is charged in U.S. District Court in Lincoln with terrorism attacks and other violence against railroad carriers and mass transportation systems.

...Wilson, who has a permit in Missouri to carry a concealed handgun, had a loaded .38-caliber handgun in his waistband, a speed loader in his pocket, and a National Socialist Movement business card on him when he was arrested.

He also had a backpack with three more speed loaders, a box of ammunition, a knife, tin snips, scissors, and a ventilation mask inside.

...In the newly unsealed federal case, [FBI Special Agent Monte Czaplewski] wrote that investigators had found videos and PDF files on Wilson's phone of a white supremacist banner over a highway, other alt-right postings, and documents related to how to kill people.

He said an acquaintance contacted by the FBI said that Wilson had been acting strange since June and had joined an "alt-right" neo-Nazi group that he found while researching white supremacy forums online.

Czaplewski said agents believe Wilson had traveled with members of the group to the Unite the Right rally at Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, where a woman was killed and 19 injured when a man used his vehicle to ram a crowd of counter-protesters.

In addition to the weaponry found on Wilson at the time of his arrest, Agent Czaplewski detailed what was uncovered when the FBI searched Wilson's home, including "a tactical vest, 11 AR-15 (rifle) ammunition magazines with approximately 190 rounds of .223 ammunition, one drum-style ammunition magazine for a rifle, firearms tactical accessories (lights), 100 rounds of 9mm ammunition, approximately 840 rounds of 5.45x39 rifle ammunition, white supremacy documents and paperwork, several additional handgun and rifle magazines, gunpowder, ammunition-reloading supplies, and a pressure plate."

And that's not all. They also found "a hidden compartment with a handmade shield," and "15 firearms, including a fully-automatic rifle, ammunition and firearms magazines, and a tactical body armor carrier with ceramic ballistic plates."

That is quite an arsenal.

Let's be frank about this: If a person of color and/or a Muslim person had been discovered to possess such an extensive cache of weaponry after trying to fuck with a train, we would be hearing about it on a loop.

But because it was a white man, whose ideology is white supremacy, we aren't asking where he got radicalized.

It's a little too uncomfortable for lots of people to acknowledge that the ideology underwriting his homegrown terrorism is as American as apple pie and shared by the United States president.

Suffice it to say, I disagree vehemently with the notion that we should be indulging those people's discomfort at the expense of marginalized people's safety.