Q: How do you get bunches of dimwits to commit felonies, forfeit their lives and freedom for a cause that has no actual impact on their lives, i.e. anti-abortion whacks, the Malheur PatRioters,etc ?
A: you produce and disseminate slanted or even faked propaganda, videos being the most effective.
The Salt Lake Tribune has tracked down the origin of a fraudulent anti-BLM video posted by the right wing land-grab group American Land Council: ALC. Yes, it does sound like ALEC, and there is probably a reason for that. The ALC seems to be similar to ALEC but its stated objective is simply to grab western lands.
The Utah-based American Lands Council, or ALC, is mostly funded by memberships, the majority of which are county commissions—that is, taxpayer-funded dues. In 2013, the last year for which records are available, the non-profit raised around $200,000 in contributions. About $157,000 of that came from memberships; $134,000 of that came from the coffers of counties. (Much of the rest comes from contributions from individuals and corporations, including Americans for Prosperity, the right-wing think tank supported by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch.) Membership ranges from a “bronze” level, which costs $1,000 a year, to “platinum,” which costs $25,000 a year.
It was operated until recently by a Utah legislator named Ken Ivory, who drew a salary of over 135k. His wife, also a Rep, also drew a salary from ALC.
Utah State Rep. Ken Ivory and Nevada County Commissioner Demar Dahl founded the ALC in 2012, the same year Ivory launched H.B. 28 — the bill that created Utah’s Transfer of Public Lands Act, which seeks a transfer of 20 million acres of federal public land to the state.
So we have local governments paying a lobbying group.
In April, the nonprofit Colorado Ethics Watch filed a complaint against the ALC with the Colorado Secretary of State, accusing the ALC of lobbying without registering as a lobbyist group. The ALC had sent an email to Coloradans, urging them to contact state legislators and support S.B. 232, which called for the study of a transfer of federal lands in Colorado to the state. (The bill failed 18-17 in the Senate in late April.)
The video in question was one created by Ammon Bundy, in support of the two ranchers who were jailed for arson, and purports to show BLM workers lighting western fires that created great distraction. In fact, it was a heavily edited version of someone else’s video that showed backfires being started to control raging fires.
….. original video was shot by an area rancher named John Witzel, who was armchair-quarterbacking the BLM's battle against the blaze. While Witzel criticized the agency for not acting quickly enough, he didn't accuse the BLM of "burning out ranchers"— as claimed in Bundy's edited version.
"What you see in the video," Heggen writes, "are firefighting efforts — including the use of backfiring, which involves intentionally burning land ahead of a wildfire in order to create a black line devoid of fuel for the wildfire — not thuggery by the yellow-clad stormtroopers of the tyrannical BLM.” ...Ammon Bundy twisted Witzel's words, according to Heggen, with clever editing to create a masterful piece of propaganda.
Then the Oregon chapter of the ALC got ahold of it and used it.
The ALC video's text even contains the same spelling errors as the one released by Bundy, the now-jailed leader of an armed takeover of a wildlife refuge in Oregon to protest federal land-management policies. So this is the source the ALC used to rile up anti-BLM opponents and enlist fees-paying ALC members.
Ken Ivory has apparently moved on to a new effort; he tried to enlist the Salt Lake Tribune reporter:
….addressing me as "friend and neighbor" and thanking me for my support of the ALC.
He also has invited me to sign up for his new cause: Free the Lands, a joint initiative of Federalism in Action, a nonprofit group affiliated with the Koch brothers and other right-wing activists.
Welcome to the Koch-owned GOP future: video tricks, tried and true ways to manipulate the public.