Three Percenters

Well, yeah, that's what cowards do, I suppose.

But yeah, in a very similar manner, Brandon Curtis was saying, you know, donate the money to me, to my group, the Idaho Three Inchers, three percenters, donate to me and we'll use the money to fund, I think, Shane, how do you put it? We'll use it to fund the Patriot Movement.

Yeah, essentially, and it's worth noting Idaho three percenters.

Idaho, this isn't the Oregon three percenters.

This is Idaho, so it's not even the same damn state.

Yeah, the Idaho three percenters are in Oregon.

They

want the donations to be funneled through them.

the whole storyline around what gets people off the couch, et cetera, that's all fiction.

There's a group called the three percenters and they've been, they've been portrayed as like this hardcore militia type that's, you know, goes back to the 13 colonies and they were, you know, they're, they're the extreme right.

No, no. They're named after the fact that 3% of the population rose up against the British in the Revolutionary War.

And guess what? The democratic socialists, they're calling themselves the 3.5 percenters because they only need 3.5% of the population to topple this government.

Professor, PhD, Ivy League school, CIA.

So.

So they took the name from the three percenters and they created these three, three, five percenters because, you know, they got to be unique.

And then.

The one area we can save on is salaries, and when I brought that up with Mike, he didn't seem to have them on his cut list.

Mike also has a bit of a troubling connection to a group called the Three Percenters.

Members of this group generally believe a small armed vanguard of patriots must be prepared to violently resist government overreach.

In 2023, Mike was named in a Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission transcript as the person to talk to locally about this group's activities.

That's im- that's like a...

My good friend, uh, Mike Vanderboegh, the founder of the Three Percenter movement, he, he died of cancer years ago, but he said it's, it's no easy thing to restore republic.

I, I mean-

Once it's, once it's gone down a slide, it's very difficult to reverse that.

And what it, and what it's gonna take to rebuild it if we lose it, you know, uh, at this point.

That's, uh, that's like a, my good friend, uh, Mike Vanderboegh, the founder of the Three Percenter movement, he, he died of cancer years ago, but he said it's, "It's no easy thing to restore a republic."

I, I mean-

Once it's, once it's gone down a slide, it's very difficult to reverse that.

So whether it's a member of the police department, the military, um, uh, Illinois State Patrol, corrections officers, there is a little bit more wiggle room that is afforded to government to put First Amendment restrictions on the activities of law enforcement.

And so as I was looking through that case law and my takeaway from conversations with the law department, I thought, "Okay, if we, if we have it focus on members of the police department, that addresses a challenge," because, um, as you were alluding to, we've had, um, people, uh, be alleged to be members of the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, Three Percenters, all in the police department, that we have documented instances of problems, and this would be a good set of solutions to weed those problems out.

Yeah.

So in, in October of '23, then Superintendent Snelling, who just announced his retirement, by the way, he had said-- he had made a, I guess, an oath or a commitment to rooting these people, people who were affiliated with these organizations, out of the department.

But you know, I just wanted to continue something as we talk about this dress rehearsal and, uh, the over-the-horizon threat.

Let's not forget that there are real extremist groups that are out, that are out there right now, right? Um, the Boogaloos, you know, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, and so on.

He has figured out how to tap into this racist, you know, Islamophobic, homophobic, um, antisemitic rhetoric that these people believe and that they run with, and I believe that it's going to be much more dangerous because, like I said, the next slicker, better financed, smarter, you know, guy already has the playbook.

It maybe failed, but that's okay.

People are gonna say, "Hey, I thought I was a registered voter." They're gonna show up on the day, right? And they're gonna go to somebody's registrar's desk and go, "I'm, I'm Joe Schmo," and they're gonna go, "Uh, we don't have you r- as a registered voter.

You, you were culled, and you never signed back up." Um, lots, lots of potential for violent flashpoints.

Um, yes, about 700 people, approaching 700 defendants in the January 6th case right now, some of them absolutely Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, Proud Boys.

W- The big question for me as a law enforcement guy, will that be enough a- of a deterrent, um, to, t- to curtail the work of these, uh, radical, violent extremist groups? We just had a group last weekend, a protest at the, a, a march at the Lincoln Memorial.

Um- [laughs]

Did you mention potential, uh, working with the Three Percenters?

I didn't mention that.

See?