Former Proud Boys national leader Enrique Tarrio is set to be sentenced on Wednesday for a failed plot to keep Donald Trump in power after the Republican lost the 2020 presidential election, capping one of the most significant prosecutions in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Prosecutors are seeking 33 years behind bars for Tarrio, who had already been arrested and ordered to leave Washington, D.C., by the time Proud Boys members joined thousands of Trump supporters in storming the Capitol as lawmakers met to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory. But prosecutors say Tarrio organized and led the group’s assault from afar, inspiring followers with his charisma and penchant for propaganda.
Tarrio was a top target in one of the most important Capitol riot cases prosecuted by the Justice Department. He and three lieutenants were convicted in May of charges including seditious conspiracy — a rarely brought Civil War-era offense that the Justice Department levied against members of far-right groups who played a key role in the Jan. 6 attack.
Racists are generally sheltered, easily lead, uneducated, and guillible.
True racism isnt generally caused by people they know, its by being told that “they” are taking your jobs, stealing your welfare, clogging your hospitals, driving your living costs up, etc, etc.
Its a tool used by the powerful to divert attention. The easily lead take it at face value and hate “them”. If they meet a “reformed” person of colour, they see them as “one of the good ones”.
While these racists can be outwardly horrible to individuals, they typically dont “hate” the person. They hate “them”. The group that doesnt really exist, that they are told are making their own life worse.
A great example is in the Louis Theroux documentary, Louis and the Nazis. He spends time with various white supremacists, and while hanging out with one of the community leaders he meets his TV repair man, a Mexican man that has been servicing his televisions for years who the white supremacist leader considers a friend. One of the leaders side kicks is also fucking a Mexican woman.
The Mexicans that they know are “the good ones”. Its the rest of “them” that are the problem in their eyes.
Its an unfortunately common occurence in people that they can be presented with direct evidence contrary to their beliefs, but they are so far gone down their rabbit hole that they consider the evidence as either an outlier or anomoly and not somethign worth analysing in terms of their perception.