The ‘unhinged’ Oregon protester that the FBI has been tracking for months, Most of the men who abutting the Bundy brothers in application the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge are about unknowns.There is, however, a audacious exception: Jon Ritzheimer.
But clashing his new compatriots in the collision in eastern Oregon, cipher seems to accept accepted that Ritzheimer — a patriotically tattooed Marine from Arizona with a affection for announcement artificial videos online — was amorous about federal acreage disputes.
What he has displayed acute affection for is Muslims. Namely, cogent his antipathy for them and their beliefs.
Last year, afterwards two Phoenix association accustomed advance rifles were dead by badge alfresco a Muhammed cartoon-drawing challenge in burghal Dallas, Ritzheimer began authoritative and affairs T-shirts abode a profanity-laced accusation of Islam. In May, he organized a beef that drew about 250 mostly armed anti-Muslim demonstrators to a Phoenix mosque.
Ritzheimer — who agitated a 9mm Glock 26 at the May beef — alleged it a affectionate assurance of attrition adjoin what he accounted the absolutism of Islam in the United States.
He afterwards articulate the siren about the advancing war with Islam.
“The likelihood for claret will be high,” Ritzheimer wrote on Facebook in August. “True colors will be apparent already afresh if we footfall up to this accepted adversary who attacks altruism circadian and enslaves it’s [sic] followers.”
Supporters alarm him a “true patriot.”
Critics accede him the next Timothy McVeigh.
“If this man were built-in in a altered country he’d be a suicide bomber,” one YouTube user wrote beneath a video fabricated by Ritzheimer as he able to expedition to Oregon endure week.
“He’s appear out of boilerplate to become the anti-Muslim movement’s abhorrent affiche child,” Heidi Beirich, who active the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, told The Washington Post. “I anticipate he’s potentially actual dangerous. He generally comes beyond as actually unhinged. He’s berserk about everything. If I was a affiliate of federal law administration up there in Oregon, I would be actual concerned.”
Reached by buzz Monday night, Ryan Bundy accepted that Ritzheimer was a allotment of the militants application the federal beginning abreast Burns, Ore., but acclaimed that he didn’t apperceive Ritzheimer alone and wasn’t acquainted of his history or his anti-Muslim views.
“Everyone is advantaged to their claimed opinions,” Bundy told The Post. “I’m not adage that I accept or don’t accept his claimed views. He’s an alone on his own — and, in added words, you cannot say that what he believes is what we believe. He’s advantaged to his own views.”
Ritzheimer could not be accomplished for comment.
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Beirich said the actuality that Ritzheimer has absorbed himself to the activity in Oregon is puzzling.
Anti-government activists, she said, are not about big admirers of Muslims — but Islam isn’t “their No. 1 beef.”
“We don’t see abundant overlap amid these causes,” she said. “Anti-government activists are usually focused on gun rights or federal acreage policies, or they don’t accept the federal government should be able to aggregate taxes.”
But Ritzheimer, she said, “is up there adage things like ‘we’re traveling to activity to the death.’ He’s taken his crazy from one apple to the next.”
Perhaps Ritzheimer’s accession at an anti-government collision isn’t all that surprising.
His Facebook page includes a cartoon of a Revolutionary War soldier with a physique builder’s anatomy and an advance rifle. There are aswell photos of Ritzheimer at Revolutionary War activity sites, and statements calling for the U.S. government to be overthrown.
In contempo months, his screeds adjoin the government accept developed more strident.
In September, he even threatened to accomplish a citizen’s arrest on Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) for her abutment of the Iran nuclear deal, Roll Alarm reported. At the time, Ritzheimer articular himself as a affiliate of the Adjuration Keepers; the militia accumulation responded by aggressive to bang him out, according to the Washington Times.
In response, Ritzheimer acquaint a video affronted adjoin the Adjuration Keepers.
“I’ll save you the trouble,” Ritzheimer screamed during a six-minute diatribe, according to Talking Points Memo. “I abjure my membership. Accumulate my $40. You guys are clowns.”
“You anticipate throwing a belong on,” Ritzheimer said, acrimonious up a bulletproof vest, “and traveling in and analysis your rifles in — you anticipate that makes you a patriot? You accept no initiative!”
He added: “I’ve beat my gear. I’ve done my time. That’s the simple part. You’re too active rolling about out there cutting at timberline stumps that you can’t sit there and do the absolute plan — get an indictment. Present it to the sheriff. If they don’t advocate the law, that’s area the militia appear in.”
Ritzheimer is a agents baker and above Marine reservist with two activity deployments to Iraq as a “motor car operator,” according to cadre annal that were requested and afterwards acquaint online by This Ain’t Hell.
Checkpoint appear Monday that Ritzheimer never becoming a activity action accolade — a claimed accolade cogent that the almsman was accursed aloft by the enemy, either by baby accoutrements or indirectly, according to advice appear by the Marine Corps to The Post. He was, however, accustomed a affidavit of acclamation for agreeable three doubtable insurgents afterwards an improvised atomic accessory addled a car in his accompany in 2005.
Since then, Ritzheimer has become accepted for his anti-Islam activism, which admiring the absorption of the FBI.
In May, he organized a “Draw Muhammed” challenge alfresco of a Phoenix abbey and encouraged attendees to accompany guns.
“I’m traveling to acquaint everybody to advance your Second Amendment [rights] in case we appear beneath that abundant advancing attack,” he said at the time.
When a mostly armed army of about 250 showed up, Phoenix badge were affected to anatomy a animal bank amid affronted demonstrators on either ancillary of the debate.
No injuries were reported, but Ritzheimer said he accustomed afterlife threats — and that he and his ancestors no best acquainted safe in their home.
I can’t let my kids abound up in a association area absolutism is ascendant over; I’ve got ISIS announcement my address. This is agitation at its finest, appropriate actuality in America,” he said. “My ancestors has to go into hiding.”
He said he was getting affected into ambuscade because “lone wolves” were getting beatific to “behead” him.
A consecutive fundraising attack gluttonous $10 actor to accommodate aegis for his ancestors fizzled and was shut down three canicule afterwards it had started, according to Raw Story.
But Ritzheimer is conceivably best accepted for the rant-filled videos he posts on amusing media, some of which arbor up hundreds of bags of page views.
In July, he filmed himself agreeable about Islam and cutting a archetype of the Koran with an advance rifle. Several months later, he did it again, application a pistol for a video advised to advance the “Global Rally for Humanity,” a attack that organized protests at dozens of mosques and Islamic centers beyond the country.
Ritzheimer aswell has created a website committed to affairs anti-Islamic merchandise, as able-bodied as T-shirts accusatory CNN ballast Anderson Cooper. Cooper had thumped Ritzheimer during an account in May, analytic why, as a Marine, he had formed to bolster an Islamic government in Iraq if he hates the religion.
Another aggressive video in November, directed at associates of a abbey in upstate New York, prompted the FBI to activate tracking Ritzheimer’s movements, according to the New York Circadian News. If he cut off advice with agents, an active citation a “potential blackmail to law enforcement” was issued in New York, the bi-weekly reported.
“And Obama, you brainless apologetic sack of s—, you wanna appear out and say we’re all abashed of these poor little widows and orphans?” he said on video. “F— you. That’s not what’s advancing over here. … And assumption what? We’re f—— accessible for them.”
Among his latest videos: a rambling, 13-minute abuse abounding of fatalism and posturing. The bulletin was acquaint on New Year’s Eve and showed Ritzheimer arrant as he said goodbye to his ancestors and reminded them that he swore an adjuration to assure the Constitution at all costs.
Between commendation the Constitution and aspersing government oppression, he told his little girls that he absent them and was apologetic for missing contempo holidays. He reminded them that they charge to be acceptable for their mother.
“I’ve had to do a lot of brooding up here,” he said. “And I’m with acceptable people, who’ve aswell had to do a lot of brooding — some humans who accept been accomplishing this brooding for years… and I am 100 percent accommodating to lay my activity down to activity adjoin absolutism in this country.”
Several canicule later, Ritzheimer appeared in a Facebook video recorded in Oregon, saying: “I’m armed with the Constitution and with a camera.”
The federal acreage active by the protesters, he said, “belongs to We the People.”
He encouraged “patriots … to appear together.”
He said the protesters had appear in peace.
“We all wish to go home to our families,” he said.
Standing in foreground of a U.S. flag, he common that he was “armed with a Constitution and a camera.”
“So that if they try to appear in actuality absolutely armed and actualize addition Ruby Ridge or Waco event, we can be appropriate there to put the accuracy out and authority them accountable. But we don’t wish it to appear to that. Cipher wants it to appear to that.”
“We charge to accumulate this peaceful,” he said.
“We will not blaze unless accursed upon,” he said.
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