I had already heard about this news story before I heard it described on NPR today. Specifically, the tale of a militia that starts at about 1:38 in the recording below:
The story describes them as a “heavily armed militia…” and no further. This leaves the listener to make assumptions. And given that this is NPR, a normal listener will probably assume that these are Dangerous MAGA Folk.
And then there’s the CNN coverage:
This story *also* does not describe the “militia members,” or name the militia organization they belong to. They show no photos of those arrested. There are quotes from a MA state police spokesman where he says that the group is vocal online about their ideology, but doesn’t say what that ideology actually is. So once again, the reader is left to make assumptions. And given that this is CNN that has screeched to high Asgard about the dangerous insurgents who almost managed to topple American democracy without F-15s and nuclear weapons, the readers are doubtless meant to make a certain sort of assumption.
Buuuuuuuuuuttttttt…….
The video coverage available on the CNN page does make one tiny slipup. The coverage does not show video or photos of those arrested, nor does it describe the militias ideology. But the woman being interviewed manages to slip in the *name* of the group, though she gets it wrong. She calls it the “Moorish American Army,” but it seems their name is “Rise of the Moors.”
Huh.
Other sites actually bothered to dig a little deeper:
“Rise of the Moors” are one of those whackadoodle “Sovereign Citizen” groups. in this case, they are black supremacists who somehow think that they are immune to the laws of the United States, that the Moors got to America before Columbus and that that, somehow, exempts them from the law. The Moors, of course, were what medieval Europeans called North African Muslims… Berbers and Arabs and the like, not sub-Saharan Africans. So these folks are cultural appropriators if there ever were any, and they’re using that cultural appropriation to try to skirt the law. These are the folks who squat in abandoned (or just temporarily unoccupied) buildings and claim them for their own. Even the Southern Poverty Law Center has pointed out that these people are not exactly on the beam. They originated in the early 20th century from Yet Another Group Of Nuts who thought that their ancient ancestors were the Real First Americans.
What were they doing to get themselves arrested? They were traveling from Rhode Island to Maine (or back) to do paramilitary training and pulled over at the side of the road to refuel a vehicle. They carried spare fuel in onboard containers because they didn’t want to stop at gas stations in order to avoid raising suspicions…. which is weird, because they ended up pulling over on the side of the road in Massachusetts to do this while carrying long guns slung over their shoulders. Me, I’m cool with people open carrying… but Massachusetts isn’t. A cop saw a bunch of people at the side of the road in tactical gear (what do you want to bet they got it from Wish) with guns galore, so he pulled over to say “howdy” at which point a bunch of ’em scattered into the woods. This is *exactly* what you do if you want the fuzz to descend upon you en masse. These are not exactly the brightest bulbs in the box: racist, willfully ignorant of history and the law, cultish and just plain idiotic.
You’d think at least some of these details would be worth mentioning on NPR or CNN. I guess that goes against The Narrative, however.
