A self-aggrandizing leader of a white supremacist militia has put one over on the American media. Jordan Jereb apparently capitalized on the media frenzy over school shooter Nikolas Cruz and tried to gain some free publicity for his militia, the Republic of Florida.
Tallahassee police say they can find no connection between Cruz and the ROF.
Cruz may be a white supremacist. He may be a Trump supporter. But to take the word of a self-promoting yahoo playing at soldier and militia “leader” without making a minimal effort to confirm the facts is truly beyond belief.
The Tallahassee Democrat reported that Leon County law enforcement sources told them “they could not find information linking Cruz, 19, to the Republic of Florida Militia, as first reported by the group’s self-proclaimed leader Jordan Jereb.” The report went on to say that Leon County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Grady Jordan said investigative work Thursday did not yield any connections.”
“We are still doing some work but we have no known ties between the ORF, Jordan Jereb or the Broward shooter,” Jordan said.
Jereb is having a gay old time, leading the media by the nose: “Jereb said Cruz was a member of the group and had participated in paramilitary training drills in Tallahassee,” the newspaper reported. In a call with the Tallahassee Democrat Jereb reportedly said there was “no way to put a good spin on all of this.”
“This is a negative situation,” he added before hanging up to speak with another news outlet.
“Jereb did not answer repeated phone calls following law enforcement officials saying they found little to lead them to believe Cruz was connected to the organization which has a scant following of around a dozen members,” the report concluded.
Heh. I’ll bet.
Meanwhile, Jereb laid it on thick as molasses.
“I know he knew full well he was joining a white separatist paramilitary proto-fascist organization,” Jereb said.
Last year, an alleged school shooter in New Mexico also expressed alt-right ideology online, as The Daily Beast previously reported.
Cruz “seemed like just a normal, disenfranchised, young white man,” Jereb said.
While no motive has been described by police, Jereb speculated that Cruz may have allegedly committed the massacre out of hatred for Jews or women.
“There’s a very real sense of feminism being a cancer. That could’ve played into what he did, but we have female members of RoF,” Jereb said, adding that “we’re not a big fan of Jews. I think there were a lot of Jews at the school that might have been messing with him.”
And the media is swallowing this codswallop?
Jereb said Cruz belonged to a RoF “cell” from Clearwater and drove up with members to Tallahassee to do paramilitary training. RoF was recently operating in Tallahassee and attempting to court new members, according to a local news report from last year. The group posts videos of training montages on the internet with members in fatigues brandishing weapons.
“I’m not trying to glorify it, but he was pretty efficient in what he did,” Jereb said. “He probably used that training to do what he did yesterday. Nobody I know told him to do that, he just freaked out.”
Got that? We trained a domestic terrorist! And he did a splendid job.
Only media hysteria over Trump would explain belief in a lying hater like Jereb. That Daily Beast article contained zero caveats and posted his idiotic ramblings without comment.
As I said, Cruz could be a member of the ROF or not. Local law enforcement, who you would think are keeping pretty close tabs on a bunch of radical righties with guns, never heard of Cruz being connected to the militia.
But that pales in comparison to the “fact” that the leader of a white supremacist militia is virtually claiming responsibility for the school shooting. And despite zero evidence and no confirmation from any independent source — indeed, a denial from local authorities — the media runs with it.
Pitiful.
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