LARPing and Violent Extremism
leb.fbi.gov
leb.fbi.gov
But no -- it's actually about terrorists and criminals trying to claim in court that their criminal planning wasn't that at all, but just LARPing:
> For example, after Kaleb Franks was arrested in October 2020 for plotting to abduct Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, he told the FBI he and his compatriots were only LARPing. Franks later pled guilty and testified that this was a lie.
So this document is for investigators to ensure they have a specific framework for being able to collect the appropriate evidence to use in court that prevents a defendent from using a LARPing defense.
Which actually makes a tremendous amount of sense. When armed militia members claim all of their organizing/preparation is just recreational, and totally unlinked to violence that members do eventually commit, it's important to have delineated standards to be able to refute that.
"Did you hear what Jim has planned?"
-"Oh he's just LARPing"
The US has a legal system that permits a defendant to say many things, like "My buddies and I were participating in a fantasy scenario where we plotted in detail and collected supplies to kidnap the governor of our state... but it was just a game. Like those other people who play games!"
Good for the authors in making an effort to clearly distinguish between protected speech and non-protected conspiracy to commit a crime.
The US has a legal system that permits a police office to say anything, but a citizen must not lie to a police officer.
The Miranda warning is not a good sign - it reminds the citizen that the government can and will use anything a citizen says for its own purposes.
You have the right to say nothing.
Sounds like a hyperbolic statement. Most citizens may be more likely to say that they do not have to deal with people who commit crime and lie to them on a daily basis unless you are in a very rough neighbourhood with very little law enforcement.
People who are policing do have to deal with this daily, however there is a change that the police could potentially form some kind of a sampling bias on new encounters with average looking citizens after dealing with so many lying criminals on a daily basis.
You can even get acquitted for it because it turned out that the FBI was the dungeon master all along: https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/2022/4/13/23023950/m...
Conspiracy plots are hard to prosecute, because who-did-what-when-with-what-intent is complex.
The purpose of the criminal justice system isn't to punish every single unruly act. It's to match punishments with the actual crimes committed. It's bizarre to see Hacker News blindly cheering on this document, although, understandably it's because most people probably don't personally like those defendants.
So.. of course it becomes the focus of the top comment.
I'm not opining whether that's a good rule or not, just wanted to be clear that this is also a rule within the US legal system.
These standards will likely make officers go after more genuine LARPers than before. These tips are very problematic if police officers start to follow them, for example:
> Role players will not discuss law enforcement concerns on social media or provide guidance to each other if confronted by an officer. Also, they will have no demonstrated interest in criminal cases involving claims of LARP.
If police officers are going after LARPers then LARPers will start to talk about what to do in those cases.
> The foremost distinction between LARPers and violent extremists is that genuine role players will not care whether others are watching. They may even embrace third-party observation, such as nonplayer characters or a general audience. After all, LARP is a performance.
Lots of people are embarrassed to do things in public, a police officer coming across some people LARPing in private shouldn't be cause for investigation.
I really don't think that the police are going to be a problem for people in fantasy gear, cosplaying, or re-enacting a historical battle. I have never heard of it. But LARPing shouldn't be an excuse for people who want to don real tactical gear and weapons and plan mayhem.
But now with these guidelines police has a reason to go after them. Something like: "I just followed these guidelines, it says you are showing terrorist signs and aren't real LARPers".
They didn't do that before, but guidelines like these changes behavior and can easily make things worse.
If you're part of a group with a manifesto, ordering weapons and explosives and doing practice drills to take down the US government, then yeah... it's highly likely that the feds are going to pay attention.
And in those cases the "I was just LARPing" defense already doesn't work. This document will not help catch criminals since in clear cases they are already caught, all it does is raise more suspicion against genuine LARPing.
??? Yea, I can tell you've never actually worked around any real life investigations before.
The difficulty with any real life situation is in a large enough group there will be some portion of the 'fakers' that are actually really motivated to commit illegal actions.
Even online this issue occurs with forms that mock the stupidity of other groups, flat earthers being a great example. If left unchecked a forum can turn from satire to true believers.
These guidelines are literally an attempt to distinguish actual terrorists from people who insist on pretending to be terrorists. It's as much good faith as you can hope for from the government, considering the domain.
None of this applies to you even if you're in the park wearing full Orc battlegear, are belligerent, drunk in public, and urinate on the arresting officer.
Here's how low the bar is:
> Among violent extremists, there may be online discussions about and guidance in using LARP as an excuse during encounters with law enforcement,
Actual LARPers don't need to be reminded to tell cops that they're LARPing. The bar is that fucking low. They'll even accept lorebooks and stats sheets as proof.
Just saw a video talking a bit facetiously about this. The question is, "What's the difference between Paintball and LARPing?"
Dressing up and using made-up names and speaking specialized terminology and engaging in make-believe combat...
They decided there is no difference. (This could just as easily be airsoft or paint markers for regular guns, to be clear.)
I don't know much about LARPing but I have the impression that the actions there aren't real, just people saying things like "I strike at thee", "I parry and riposte" while pantomiming in slow motion.
Wouldn't it be easy to tell a fencing duel from a LARP swordfight?
eg: https://greycompany.com.au/
Now billed as "Historical Re-enactment focusing on the Dark Ages and Medieval times" and has been swinging swords and building trebuchets since ~ 1980(ish) at least.
* Varies, of course, by LARP groups
But to your point, yes, most amateur sports could be boiled down to a form of LARPing given enough twisting.
I find this plausible, too: I can imagine groups of people getting together recreationally and fantasizing about how they're going to overthrow the fascist mayor, or kill all the Jews, or whatever else. With their real guns and tactical gear, because those look cool. With a badass logo, maybe with some skulls in it. But with no intention of ever actually acting out those fantasies.
eg: see youtube's Flattened Earth - The Glorious LARP (2021)
Conspiracy Theory Historic Reenactment Metal Band Flattened Earth is Satire
It’s a multiplayer game in which players LARP as assassins out to kill targets that they receive secretly at the start of the game.
The game has rules that describe how to simulate various forms of weapons and tactics (e.g. using a rolled-up sheet of paper as a dagger), and the rules are intended to help make it clear to observers that it’s just a game in which no actual crimes are intended, but it still involves people behaving in ways that could be misinterpreted.
I played it some at VCU in the late 1970s. It was fun.
It sounds like it might be a dangerous time to LARP about and plan terrorist acts. That could be very problematic for those who enjoy that as a recreational hobby. But in some ways there's a precedent for it with flying. Lots of people used to love to LARP about taking a bomb on a plane and that recreational activity has been significantly curtailed. Maybe we're heading for a world where it's no longer safe to plan the kidnapping of state or national government officials and then practice the steps necessary to carry it out, and where we can no longer joke about a bomb look-alike device that we want to take on airplanes.
Really?
So, counter to your (ironic?) point, I think the existence of this article will make me more likely to explore this avenue- I have a reference for what I would need to do to avoid crossing the line. And counter to what I suspect may be your actual point, I think it is totally reasonable to want to do things like this.
I don't really see the difference.
Imagine an FBI agent looking at evidence of Timothy McVeigh at a gun show in 1994. He's selling a flare gun he claims can 'shoot down an ATF helicopter' and ATF hats with bullet holes in them.
When interviewed without charge, imagine McVeigh claims that it's part of his LARPing activities.
What standards would you suggest that agent applies, in order to avoid a false negative?
Presumption of innocence does not extend to the initiation of an investigation, but comes into play with increasingly invasive methods (and ultimately, charges).
US law enforcement is empowered to initiate duck investigations on things that quack pretty liberally.
If your in some group that reenacts pointing weapons at each other, or coming up with idea on how to blow up buildings and you have someone overhear this and report it, law enforcement themselves have no idea if you're the real thing our not (statistically, no your not, but investigators deal with outliers all day every day). If there is some kind of audio or video evidence saying something actionable (even though it may be pretend) and that gets in front of a judge, expect a warrant to get issued to tap into just about every part of your life.
This is not the standard actually applied to law enforcement in the US. You can be convicted of nothing other than resisting arrest. Resisting arrest for what? Literally does not matter.
Also if you are arrested and found innocent, you are not compensated in any way for that arrest, which was clearly wrongful. Police in general are simply exempt from unlawful detention, except in cases of a well connected individual.
Not only that, there are likely fees and fines.
I don't see how this document would help find criminals and help free innocents. It seems to give way too rigid guidelines that will be misused by many officers.
By the rubric this document suggests, McVeigh would have satisfied 0 / 10 LARPing signals in Table 1.
> Imagine an FBI agent looking at evidence of Timothy McVeigh at a gun show in 1994. He's selling a flare gun he claims can 'shoot down an ATF helicopter' and ATF hats with bullet holes in them.
Not "Imagine an FBI agent looking at Timothy McVeigh building pipe bombs in private". I don't see how this document would have helped stop McVeigh.
Maybe this doc helps them sort the wheat from the chaff, because the agent doesn't actually know anything about LARP groups.
And this seems accurate as the ratio of larping to terrorism is probably millions to one.
Thousands of people larp every day in the US. Terrorism is fairly rare with maybe a few events per year.
The only people who make that claim are terrorists.
So maybe this is another case of terrorists just being stupid.
Or I expect that GP had some sort of brain fart, disagreed with my statement, and typed the first version of “nuh uh” they came up with.
I made the statement because according to statista [0] there were only 149 terrorist acts in North America from 2007-2022.
That seems fairly rare to me.
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/489581/terrorist-attacks...
But if you're playing pretend with real weapons, you deserve scrutiny, regardless of your ideology.
Also, I would hope the real LARPing community can feel safe enough to share tips on what to do if they run into police while running around the woods with foam swords.
When the FBI was engaging in such "entrapment" against Muslim Americans after 9/11, you would never hear the right-wing complaining, but now of course that their own are turning out to be the perps and the targets, suddenly they want to act like they are against law enforcement over-reach and malfeasance. Except of course when the victim is Black, and then they switch back to not caring.
At the end of the day, a good person can't be convinced to engage in terrorism or violence of any kind, whether politically or religiously motivated. The notion that people who wanted to kidnap someone--for the stupidest and most ignoble of reasons--are "victims" here is lacks any moral credibility or seriousness.
And what's more, it's whiny, weak, and hypocritical. If you ask those criminals (that's all they are) or their supporters whether they think masculinity is in decline and under attack in America, they'd probably launch into a whole spiel of grievances, yet when it push comes to shove, those guys wanted to be absolved for responsibility for their actions and for the corruption of their own hearts and minds. Not manly at all. No integrity.
Politics is tiring for that reason, most people lose their rational thinking ability when that gets involved, and to an outsider all of it just looks like insanity.
If you're trying to reduce any real world situation to a binary set of choices, you're almost always going to be incorrect. When I was a teenager I was working in a shop and a number of people around there had more radical views on the government. A few of them commonly got together and did what we'd consider LARPing now (this was 90s). One of them seems to have more a more violent anti-government take over the others. Wasn't long before the FBI was down there arresting him and he eventually served a healthy sentence over his actions.
Unfortunately Google has become a memory hole on older news like this, and I can no longer remember his name to find any articles on this.
The overreach in question is that the police were allowed to arrest and prosecute those people in full accordance with the law.
This implies that only full pacifists can be good persons. Because for everyone else, there is a situation in which they will engage in violence, and all you have to do is fool them into thinking they're in that situation.
Instead of morally corrupting someone, all you have to do is fool them about what the facts are.
And that is a lot easier, and it's what the FBI in fact does. From police work, they know exactly the type who can be convinced to not only confess whatever you like, but come to believe it too. The world is full of people with little faith in their own perception, memory or understanding of reality, and they are not any more likely to be principled pacifists than anyone else.
They’ve already been convicted, they’re in jail and will be for a few more years.
You lost, get over it.
You probably shouldn't conspire to kidnap someone, regardless of who came up with the idea first. You are expected to just not engage with the guy suggesting it.
I think the delineation between the members to that eventually commit violence and the ones who can successfully use the "LARPing" defense is whether or not they committed any crimes. It's pretty simple to me. This sounds, to me, a lot more like a guide on how to convict people who committed no crimes associated with the criminals who did.
That being said, my wooden "E-11 replica" is still around at my uncles place, 30 odd years later.
If a group of actual LARPers doesn't want spectators, isn't part of a larger LARPing community, doesn't have rules/character sheets, is concerned about law enforcement (!) then they look like terrorists, based on this guidance.
The problem is that they've commingled a handful of objective facts with a handful of mental states and motives that are only known to the individuals.
The only reliable factor is if they are using live weapons and ammunition. Sadly, law enforcement is likely incapable of using that single, obvious factor to judge the legality of what is otherwise creative expression, and therefore leans into the pseudo-forensics provided here.
These are hardcore airsoft guys who go buy comms, night-vision, IR, with airsoft weapons that function like real weapons. There are multi-day events with NATO vs RUS forces. Look up "milsim west" on Youtube and you can get a sense of it.
There's a good amount of folks that just like to have fun, but there is a subset that use it as a type of militia-esque training.
There is this odd thing about the human brain that as soon as it is in a group and have tools of violence at hand it will often start planing to take over the society
ISIS was a good example, they were being quickly defeated by pretty much everyone involved in the Syrian conflict.
Individuals might not have heavy weapons to start. But with enough time, weapon destructivness reaches a parity.
Now think about whether either of those conditions apply in a particular scenario, then remember you need both. Afghans obviously hated being invaded and helped "their guys", they also had Peshawar.
The captured vehicles could often be serviced by either side. Also, some vehicles could be traded with foreign partners'. I bet you there are multiple T-90 and even more interesting vehicles in Yuma Proving Ground and other compounds, disassembled to the last screw.
So if you would want to create a stealth militia in germany, this would probably be the way to go.
And in the events I participated, I knew the orga and I knew they were clearly into LARPing - but with some of the other people who attended, I was not so sure.
So I really hope it stays legal as it is a lot of fun, but I also hope it does not go out of hand, as increasingly with covid, there has been some radicalisation in certain groups ...
edit: to share an anecdote of why it is interesting to me, aside from the shooting:
There was a big event last year, with an apocalyptic setting. Killervirus and Zombies, Military and Civilians. I happened to be on the military side, which was (by design) better organised and equipped. And during the game, it turned out, that our side was the evil side, who originally released the zombie virus. But what to do? Everyone else was potentially an enemy, who maybe wanted to shoot you and the people around you, your trusted comrades. So you stick with them for survival. As I have never been to the military, this was an interesting inside into how conflict and war crimes works and why people stay in line, despite they distance themself from what they are representing.
Their Facebook group: https://m.facebook.com/profile.php/?id=100075824776496
There’sa few articles with pictures floating around. This one’s from Vice: https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5vpbx/poland-larp-america-o...
Your resistance proves your guilt. Insisting on your fourth and fifth amendment rights? Noting other cases where innocent hobbyists were threatened and trying to avoid the same? Seems like violent extremism.
This is a good point. When I am in character as a LARP law enthusiast that’s LARPing as a violent extremist, my in-character explanation of why I am not criminally liable for my OC’s OC’s behavior to police are a violation of my rights.
Although the history of LARP as a legal defense is narrow, the authors share the concern that it may soon become commonplace. Early attempts at such a strategy have been made by a defendant acting alone or in loose cooperation with members of a fantasy group who knew each other only in the virtual world, claiming “artistic expression” to excuse threatening language.
Why is this a trend...
> Extremism does not exist without identifying an out-group and taking hostile action against it.
Remember Tide pods? Same thing.
> These thoughts are part of being human, and need not ruin the quality of life. Treatment is available when the thoughts are associated with OCD and become persistent, severe, or distressing.
> One example of an aggressive intrusive thought is the high place phenomenon, the sudden urge to jump from a high place. A 2011 study assessed the prevalence of this phenomenon among US college students; it found that even among those participants with no history of suicidal ideation, over 50% had experienced an urge to jump or imagined themselves jumping from a high place at least once. A 2020 study carried out in Germany reported similar results.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrusive_thought#Aggressive_t...
Ah, OK. I'm not on TikTok.
> Search #intrusivethoughts or find some videos and I'm sure the algo will start showing you more.
Thanks, but no thanks :-)
Edit: eg https://kotaku.com/minecraft-death-threat-4chan-pol-shooter-...
What the hell you are going on about man. If you post something like "Hey, lets shoot some cops", or hell "lets start shooting ____" online you are giving up your right to privacy. Yes, the US legal system has means of taking the 'evidence' you posted online in front of a judge and getting a warrant. Via the warrant system nearly complete dismantling of your privacy can be compelled.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
In addition law enforcement agencies, especially the local ones, are based on the whims of elected officials. If the local populace thinks they they aren't being tough enough on crime, then especially in smaller cities, they will be replaced.
It's only fair that the people do not comply, seeing as we know none of these countries have a problem with violating rights whenever they desire.
This is a reasonable concern.
I will note anecdotally not all role players are playing with a full deck -- though I am more familiar with role playing gamers, not LARPers (granted: not entirely separate groups). Some are mildly cracked, sometimes harmlessly -- the guy who exclusively played female characters and might have identified as trans had he been born later -- and some not so harmlessly -- the gal who forged her own sword which she took with her everywhere, even the mall, by concealing it under a cape, and genuinely believed she was the last special warrior of some sort from a fictional series.* She believed she was female to signify she was the last.
So that may complicate sorting out who is just playing games from who is a genuine threat of planned violence.
On a psychological level, LARPers temporarily enter a fictional world with characters who reside within it and are separate from day-to-day reality; there is no discomfort in distinguishing between the two.
It implies the opposite -- that violent extremists may have trouble distinguishing -- but doesn't seem to say it outright.
The exact differences they point out, such as "spectators being welcome" vs "secrecy is paramount" are clear, universal, well thought out, and interesting to read about and consider.
The article said LARP is always group-based. Possibly the authors intended the other claims to be rules of thumb. Certainly their intended audience included people who tend to think in black and white. And several claims I contradicted were faulty rules of thumb.
> To prepare for a violent attack, terrorists possess and practice real weapons and live ammunition. LARPers would have no need for such destructive instruments when preparing for their event.
Nobody loves guns more than LARPers. I know more people into pyrotechnics that play wizards in larps than pretty much any other category of weirdo, and I know a lot of weirdos. It's a power fantasy, but it's one that they love to live out in a small way, and range-shooting is one of the most common expressions of it.
Audience: "Spectators accepted or desired" vs "Secrecy demanded"
Quite some LARP people who want to avoid spectators, since quite some conservative or religious people tend to associate some fantasy stuff to be "satanistic" or "sacrilegious". Thus, to avoid really annoying discussions, they prefer no spectators.
Components: "Features of organized gaming (e.g., rules, character sheets, scenario scripts, in- and out-of-character designations)" vs "Absence of documented rules, character sheets, scenario scripts, in- and out-of-character designations; all “characters” are frontline fighters or operational support personnel"
There exist LARP system where there exist many rules, but also those where such things are handled in a more "loose"/"spontanous"/"improvisatory" way.
Relationship with law enforcement: "No concern with law enforcement in out-of-character life" vs "Demonstrated concern with law enforcement and prosecutions of similar criminal behavior"
Of course, those who distrust the law enforcement (often for good reasons) are suspicious to be extremists - that is what the FBI claims ;-) . Seriously: there likely exist LARP players with about any possible stance concerning law enforcement.
Equipment: "realistic prop weapons often discouraged in the rules"
It depends on the LARP system whether these are discouraged or encouraged.
Personal grievance: "No personal grievance toward out-group(s) outside the voluntary, fantasy world" vs "Personal grievance toward out-group(s) believed to pose an imminent and existential threat, requiring violent action" and Mood: "Euthymic and joyful; anticipatory fantasy to enjoy the event" vs "Dysphoric and angry; anticipatory fantasy to harm or kill the target(s)"
This depends a lot on the setting of the LARP: of course some cyberpunk, horror or dark-fantasy themed LARP will be much more dark than, say, some high fantasy or utopic science-fiction setting.
Tangential, but still an interesting intersection of law enforcement vs free expression. Thankfully I think that all parties just politely agreed they should just stop while the suspects were still active and at large.
Regular police investigative techniques can disambiguate intent of (an) individual(s) by searching their items and questioning their plans. Someone LARPing isn't going to play act with live ordinance, contagious pathogens, or actual firearms. They may well carry swords, but then they'd also be wearing padded armor. I think it's up to a judge or jury to decide if the Free Staters of Terrorism were committing terrorism or not in highly-suspicious, ambiguous circumstances.
Leaping to the deep-end of paranoia about mostly innocent play would create a society with a corrosive, suspicious attitude.
Now an awful thought: Although it seems a weird and terrible idea, I could imagine a group of kids going somewhere hopefully unoccupied and unlikely to be patrolled by police LARPing as terrorists, school shooters, or any other taboo archetype.
For the record, a dying (and now late) friend of mine was once violently arrested in a parking lot for playing Ingress in Los Altos, CA.
Huh? normal people LARP with actual firearms using live ammunition all the time on tactical training sets. Most of them pay legitimate, taxpaying corporations thousands of dollars for the privilege.
And then this:
> Meetings may entail impassioned rhetoric and rehearsal of tactical operations for the ultimate future apocalypse when citizens will overtake the government or institute their own community policing.
This quote is fucking insane, imo. "citizens will overtake the government" – aren't citizens already supposed to be in charge of the government? A very strange choice of words. What about all that "We the People" stuff. And second, "or institute their own community policing" - it is how the policing in the US works. Local police forces account for the majority of police force in the US according to National Sources of Law Enforcement Employment Data [1].
>> [recommendations to probe and challenge] motives during an interview (e.g., “If you were just LARPing, why did you need live explosives?”)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXtswMYlBd0&pp=ygUPQ2l2aWwgd2F...
Now, all (majority) citizens? Sure. But we established proper procedures how to execute that power, and you aren't supposed to skip those. Mainly because without those, you cannot guarantee that it's actually majority's opinion, and not loud minority. But even if you have majority of the area agreeing on something, there is no reason why suddenly they should be able to abandon all the agreements, (social) contracts and rules they agreed to before.
also as equally useless of a defense as 'just LARPing' if any of your other behavior shows different intentions and inconsistency with the group that would use these phrases, i.e. you don't play videogames
it's always felt off that someone genuinely believes that changing their phrasing would fool other people of their intent, like something that an actual child would come up as a legal defense
I disagree with this bit completely. As a practitioner of a weapons based martial art I had to be very familiar with the law to ensure that I didn’t break the law by accident. Ignorance of the law is not a defence.
Fbi quietly putting psyops telling anti- government is extreme belief lmao.
See how they treated anybody who believe socialism was good back in the cold war days. How they kept detailed files on people who spoke against the powers held by the authorities.
Anything or group that threatens the power of the state becomes their target - those targets evolve with time.
they were larping as witches.
Boy is it. I’m gravely concerned the threat LARPing posed to our democratic government.
> "Never believe that [they] are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. ... They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert." — JPS
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2018/08/03/the-gamification-of-r...
The same people who use rhetoric in bad faith would happily use violence if they thought it would be a more effective method to advance their motives.
> Conversely, violent extremists or terrorists want secrecy. This desire may contribute to the sense of clandestine excitement that surrounds them and their preparation on a pathway to actual violence.9
What is this? Why is the FBI writing stuff like this and publishing it?
Its "find crime, they claim larping, check behavior to verify"
No body with a hot girlfriend and a jacuzzi is flying planes into buildings.
So you think it is fine to investigate people who play around on their private property for terrorism just because they don't want you watching? To me that seems very scary and oppressive.
Terrorists will seem wary or apprehensive or even combative in regards to police and govt, and have real weapons involved. They might even mention on social media derogatory remarks towards actual living people, LARPers may trash talk at Lord Farquad of The kingdom of Shrek but that's not the same as plotting to kidnap a govt official.
Violent extremists use a variety of dodges to attempt to avoid accountability for their behavior. You've probably seen examples - it is very common to shout "false flag", claiming rivals impersonated them, for instance[1].
This is just another in a long line of those sorts of things.
The FBI's remit includes investigating and arresting violent extremists. As such, they collect and disseminate information that assists with that goal.
[1] Some of the same people also actually engage in "false flag" operations of their own - for instance, the "Boogaloo Boys" were responsible for violence and arson in Minnesota and murder in California during the George Floyd riots, which was initially misattributed to BLM-affiliated folks.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/23/texas-boogaloo...
>Violent and criminal actors, particularly those involved in a conspiracy, could potentially make false claims, explaining that they were merely LARPing and not intending to follow through with an attack. For example, after Kaleb Franks was arrested in October 2020 for plotting to abduct Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, he told the FBI he and his compatriots were only LARPing. Franks later pled guilty and testified that this was a lie.5
>Although the history of LARP as a legal defense is narrow, the authors share the concern that it may soon become commonplace. Early attempts at such a strategy have been made by a defendant acting alone6 or in loose cooperation with members of a fantasy group who knew each other only in the virtual world,7 claiming “artistic expression” to excuse threatening language.8
Congratulations you're as out of touch as our parents were.
>Individuals can engage in such activity informally or as part of an organized group. Presumably, the earliest formal LARP group was Dagorhir Battle Games, founded in the United States in 1977.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1913_Gettysburg_reunion
Now if only these experts could use google leaping for 30 seconds before writing an add for their consultancy services.
>Ms. Amman is a retired FBI supervisory special agent, certified threat manager, and private threat assessment management consultant in West Des Moines, Iowa. Dr. Phil Saragoza
>Dr. Saragoza is a forensic psychiatrist, adjunct clinical assistant professor at the University of Michigan, and threat assessment consultant in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
(That's not to say that it's good, or that the FBI will apply it effectively or correctly, only that it isn't as simple as "the FBI believes in the DnD cult conspiracy.")
Did everyone forget that the US only exists because of treason and insurrection directly sparked from individuals refusing to allow someone else to determine whether they can arm themselves? Probably. Public school doesn't like to focus on the details anymore.
If Sam Adams existed today, he'd be on an FBI/ATF watchlist.
Because this is deeply intertwined with "politics" it becomes radioactive to discuss in polite society (e.g., HN itself), but we'd be well served to find a way to have some dialog.
VEs are increasing in number and sophistication over time because the social contract of the United States has been cleaved.
On one side you have individualistic capitalists who don't want to be told what to do and don't want to subsidize the existence of others.
On the other you have communal idealists who recognize the scale advantage state actions and programs can have and want to deploy them.
The later are winning and the former do not have a political exit that does not involve secession.
That's the fundamental base. The heightened media attention being paid to instances of the above are in response to the general understanding that those fundamentals are now in place.
Edit: my understanding is that the leading idea is not secession but something called Project 2025. Depending on how you look at it, it's either a "rightsizing" of government or a coup.
That is also why conflict is only going to increase over time until one side or the other is decisively defeated (and even then there will be clandestine groups).