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I think a major part of PF's issue is that they don't seem organic at all, so they get no support from the right wing.
Every time they come up in my circles, everyone starts screaming "FED! FED!" and until they deal with those optics they are going to be left out to hang.
Funnily enough, this FED-screeching happens in both relatively normal freedom-loving libertarian and neo-nazi groups.
I don't think there are any particular reasons to believe PF are "feds" (presumably meaning: led by federal informants?) beyond them being a group that does IRL protests. Which is a decent reason to believe they have informants, but not a decent reason to believe that they, as a group, are primarily lead by feds.
The only evidence I’ve seen has been
Some journalist sifting their comments. I can’t really tell what he’s linking because Twitter is a trash website.
None of them are morbidly obese.
It’s, uh. Not exactly a knockdown argument.
The arguments that I've seen for Patriot Front being federal agents have nothing to do with them not being morbidly obese - the general neonazi position on matters of physical fitness are that if you are representing the movement at all you need to be physically capable and impressive. The real reason as to why people think they're feds is that they're directly advocating for a form of protest that leads to people who join them getting doxxed and prosecuted, while at the same time doing absolutely nothing to achieve meaningful political change. Organisations like PF are worse than useless at achieving political goals in the current climate, and carry an incredibly high risk of permanently ejecting the people involved from mainstream society. For the record I think that argument is actually somewhat convincing given just how many cases we've seen of the FBI manufacturing and creating terror plots so they can arrest some isolated losers.
I’m not going to get into what Nazis actually think about fitness. But as I pointed out above, these guys, if you met them on the streets outside of the actual protest, would absolutely look and act like official muscle. Super-fit, 25-30 tops, dressed in polos and khakis and carrying riot shields. Nobody can go from the typical incel physique to military levels of fitness in the timeframe in question. If they’re joining and within 6 months look ready for deployment, there’s definitely something off here.
The other thing is that in the arrests, it’s very obvious that the feds had very clear ideas of exactly where they’re going to be such that the government can immediately stop them on the way to their protest. As has been pointed out above they never reached the event, and never actually rioted. And given that they’re driving to a protest in a U-haul that’s not immediately obvious, it seems somewhat weird to me. There’s no reason that the government should be able to find a single U-Haul out of however many are rented in a day, going to a specific site and know which route they’re taking. Unless someone on the inside told them about the u-haul and the specific route, it’s simply not possible.
You might want to ask Edward Snowden about that one.
I mean there are parts of that story that absent someone texting them and handling them information don’t track for me.
First of all, this is a rental vehicle and thus unless you know which vehicle they’re renting from which rental place, you are not really able to put out the information or put trackers in the vehicle. You also need to figure out where they’re coming from and specific routes if you’re going to have assets in place to stop them en route. Even having the information of renting uhauls doesn’t help with tracking as there’s no way to pick out PF from dozens of people moving stuff around by uhaul. Even having the lísiense isn’t enough unless you get super lucky and happen to have your persons of interest drive past a cop car. Technology can’t help you find something you don’t know anything about.
Did they rent the vehicle with cash? If not, they could easily be tracked. Even if they did, rental companies have internal databases, which could well be penetrated.
It's most likely there were informants. But they don't actually need them.
Unless the card is flagged it would still take time to look through the databases and find the transaction, and this still doesn’t give you enough data to stop that one vehicle in transit. Unless they somehow blocked every possible route instantly, there isn’t a good way to find that truck and deduce where it’s going and then send the cops.
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