The Right Winger Super Bowl Disruption Menace
I’m not going to make predictions about whether the rumors about a right wing led blockade of the Super Bowl will have any chance of success. But I can confirm that there are rumors and a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) warning about an attempt to disrupt Sunday’s footballfest.
Left Coast Right Watch, an online publication collating reports of extremist activities, says they’ve seen two flyers concerning events at the Championship game.
“...with one of the flyers explicitly claiming collaboration with some kind of “Freedom Convoy” offshoot for the United States and the other focusing on false allegations of human trafficking increases during the Super Bowl.”
They’ve also called attention to a 600+ participant Telegram group chat aiming to assist a potential California convoy.
One of the most active administrators of this group chat is Ryan Sanchez, who goes by Culture War Criminal. Sanchez is a known neo-Nazi with ties to RAM (Rise Above Movement) and who regularly streams as part of the extended network of “America First” influencers lead by holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.
Photos of an in-person meeting in Huntington Beach (a hotbed of far right activity) on Wednesday were intercepted by researcher Vishal P. Singh. Most of the faces were blurred.
It is important to remember the tendency of far right activists to exaggerate their numbers and intentions. Many of the pictures coming out of the protests in Canada have been repurposed from news accounts dating back a decade.
The stadium in Inglewood has got to be a tempting target. But, then again, the Super Bowl is and has been a target. There has got to be a library shelf somewhere dedicated to fictional accounts of bad guys trying to take down this high profile.
DHS said it has worked for more than a year to support security measures around the Super Bowl and dedicated more than 500 individuals from the department to assist.
Stepped up security measures really took shape after the 9/11, 2001 attacks with Super Bowl XXXVI in New Orleans on Feb. 3, 2002 between the New England Patriots and St. Louis Rams.
In recent years the focus in preparations has been preventing drone incursions. Once such an attack was underway the techniques currently used to disable drones could “imperil crowds where a disabled UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] may land,” according to an unnamed DHS office quoted in Foreign Policy.
Air Force fighter jets will enforce a temporary flight-restricted zone on Sunday in collaboration with the Federal Aviation Administration, the FBI and other agencies. NORAD earlier in the week staged a defense exercise for the airspace over the Inglewood area.
Despite the DHS advisory about potential trouble on Sunday, the agencies responsible for security at the event have been flooding the media with spokespersons and press releases saying “there are no known security threats to the Super Bowl.”
