Failed Congressional Candidate Pleads Guilty to Plotting Attack on Muslims

Hate speech has consequences
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Attack plotter Robert Doggart

Here’s where the ceaseless anti-Muslim incitement of people like Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer and media outlets like Fox News and Breitbart “News” unsurprisingly leads: Tennessee Man Pleads Guilty to Plotting Attack on Muslims.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A man who ran for Congress last year in East Tennessee has pleaded guilty to plotting an attack on a small Muslim enclave in New York.

Federal agents began investigating Robert Doggart of Signal Mountain following a Facebook posting in which he claimed a community outside of Hancock, New York, was planning a terrorist attack and “must be utterly destroyed,” according to the plea agreement entered last month.

This area in Delaware County is known as “Islamberg,” a self-named community consisting primarily of Muslims.

Via cellphone, Doggart also told unnamed people cooperating with the FBI that his plan involved killing residents and burning at least three buildings. He met with at least one source in Nashville.

“Those guys (have) to be killed,” Doggart said during one call. “Their buildings need to be burnt down.” During the same call, Doggart told the person on the phone that pistols couldn’t be carried from Tennessee to New York because the city doesn’t have carry permit reciprocity, but that “AR-15s, M-4s or M-16s” could be brought.

Doggart said he planned to bring his M-4 rifle with four magazines, according to the court document.

At TPM, Josh Marshall has more on the Fox News connection to this murder plot: The Engineered Ignorance of Fox News.

But there’s one element of this story buried in the piece. The supporting role of Fox News. Not long after the terror attacks in Paris at the beginning of the year, Fox News went on a tear about no-go zones in Paris, Birmingham and other places - a run of fabrications so extreme that the station was compelled to issue one of the only retractions and apologies the network has ever issued.

One of the guests who was part of this was Ryan Mauro, head of the ‘Clarion Project’, an anti-Muslim group best known for producing lurid anti-jihadist movies which are distributed to voters in the run-ups to US elections. Mauro told Fox that the FBI considered the Muslims of America community in Hancock to be a threat and he had videos of them “engaging in guerrilla warfare training.”

Ryan Mauro; there’s a name I remember. I had a run-in with this religious fanatic right wing hater back in January 2010, when he was working for the “Christian Action Network:” Ryan Mauro and the Christian Action Network.

Spreading hatred has very real consequences in the real world, and I’m glad Robert Doggart was caught before he could carry out his mass murder plan. But Fox News and people like Ryan Mauro and Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer continue to pump poison into the veins of American discourse every single day, and there are more Robert Doggarts out there soaking it all up.

And remember, this isn’t just a random right wing loon. It’s a guy who had the resources and connections to actually run for Congress.

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Last updated: 2023-04-04 11:11 am PDT
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