Wow, Robert, thank you. We need more articles like this because too many Santa Barbarans are very very ignorant about Antifa and defend it. I have a question. How did the Left take over what was originally anti-globalist and turn it into what it into the globalist/Marxist army it is today? My husband I were living in NYC during Occupy Wall Street and went to join the protest. As my husband says it was a carnival of protest against Wall Street misdeeds, from the left, right and center. There were the early Antifa types there, but they were so different than what we see now. Then during the Obama years we joined a Union Square protest against his NSA policies. The Left tried to take it over. We applauded that the organizers of it shooed those assholes out. And btw, we saw none of our liberal NYC media friends there. They didn't approve of protesting against Saint Barack. (I voted for him twice, but the Obama years drove me out of the Democratic Party.) Thank you.
Let’s not forget the causation of the 2008 meltdown as a predicate of the sub prime mortgage crisis. Putting people in homes they can’t afford in order to score cheap political points led to financial disaster, which we all are paying for.
No, home ownership is not a right! Sadly, that dream is gone for many young families, especially here locally.
None of the protestors at OWS that I talked to would have disagreed with you. And I talked to no one who was there in, say, the way that people are at a No Kings march through being worked up. They were very informed people. There are always two protests — one you're in and one you read about,
Btw, your view of it is much the same as our media friends at the time. And I came to view those friends as not people I could trust on what they said or wrote.
Robert - thank you! You’ve done something James Bond wanna-be’s don’t do - infiltrate the enemy & give us an inside look at the Antifa Freaka’s.
Rosebraugh was presumably - ‘public relations/press office’ rather than being part of their sabotage cells. Just as, if not more dangerous than the jerks carrying out their ‘missions’.
You were so right about the Montana farm, “But the Bureau didn’t bite. They wanted indictments, not experiments. Had they let me run the farm, we could have owned the movement.” Turning down the opportunity of getting the enemy together in one place to figure out how to crush them - short-sighted thinking.
‘What Craig Rosebraugh — America’s “number-one domestic terrorist”— needed most, I thought, was a hug.” yeah - with a noose
I always love reading about your days of infiltration in enemy camps. I wish Radcliffe and Patel would listen to some of your stories and use your experience to do some of the same.
I think your view here is too narrow. I recall the 60s, Peoples Liberation Front, Weather Underground, Black Panthers.... There were groups promoting violence, and there was much violence, but there were also many people who deplored violence but realized that the basic ideas behind these groups were, for the most part, pretty good. End the Vietnam war, civil rights, women's rights, and so on. Basically, any period of large scale social change is going to produce a violent fringe on both sides (the KKK, beginnings of the Aryan Nations). It's a natural human phenomenon. The groups that promote violence will often be parasitic on the more tempered but much larger movements. A couple of good reads by Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing give some idea about this: Prisons We Choose to Live Inside (a series of radio lectured from 1985) and The Sentimental Agents (a satirical novel on the human tendency to rally to support causes). Interestingly, there was almost no violence in the No Kings protests despite their size, and there were no arrests of No Kings protesters. The few arrests that did occur were MAGA types trying to attack them.
“Peoples Liberation Front, Weather Underground, Black Panthers.... the basic ideas behind these groups were, for the most part, pretty good.” Are you kidding - they should have all been hung!
Wow. Not the deep dive I was hoping for. While extremely interesting, very shallow and somewhat dishonest. If you want to demonize ELF for using violent tactics, shouldn't you also own up to the use of violent tactics by your own groups you worked for, the FBI and CIA? Who killed Fred Hampton? LaVoy Finicum? Patrice Lumumba? Ngo Diem? Muamar Gaddafi? These are not the only concerning examples.
It is dishonest to say "direct action" means violence. I was an antiwar activist and anti globalization activist that was in large demonstrations with such people. People who advocated the harming of other human beings were immediately suspected of being agents provocateur or Feds. Some people felt direct action included property destruction, some felt it did not. To claim that direct action is necessarily personal violence or property destruction is not true. The mass actions did not and would self-police anyone trying to be violent or even those destroying property. I can't speak for now, but in the period Robert is writing about, direct action included things like large protests, sit-ins, disrupting speakers, blockading an intersection or event, and creating independent media. Think direct as in diy rather than trust the bought elected representatives, the corrupt media, or corporate experts.
As an antiwar activist raised on Catholic morality, I reject all personal violence, but I continue to be struck by the hypocrisy. Benjamin Netanyahu is overseeing a blatant genocide on our dime with our elected representatives and administration coerced into protecting and funding, but he is fine to be invited on talk shows and lavished standing ovations by our Congress. But we are supposed to look down on this guy for working with people who spike trees in an old growth forest and for writing a discussion about armed struggle? Did you know international law and Catholic teaching both permit armed struggle in certain circumstances? I will agree that putting the lives of workers in danger to protect the environment by tree spiking is wrong, but it is just a little rich to hear the condemnation come from a man who worked for the CIA and FBI. Tell us, Robert Eringer, is it wrong to use violence to advance a political agenda? Or only when ELF does it?
The real history of ANTIFA goes back to Jewish violent resistance groups in Europe in the wake of WWI. Might want to start there.
I believe that each constituency within ANTIFA has goals which can attract rational people, although the means of achieving the goal can be condemned. What concerns me the most is why are groups with quite different goals e.g. environmental, economic , race based, global issues, working in concert. What ideology or overriding goal would want to combine the various ANTIFA groups?
That is the question that needs to be answered. Many of us know what that answer is. Berney
"These are smart people, educated people and it runs like a cell right out of the anti-fascist tradecraft books of Europe in the 1970s, it doesn't have a head or hierarchy, but it has a lot of local leadership," the government insider explained. "The local apparatus has very good intelligence capabilities, but where their weaknesses are is in communication and using apps that allow for large group chats."
They’re just a bunch of out-of-control wannabe “rebels” in the throes of recycling someone else’s “revolution”— same anger, different hashtag."""""""""""""""""""
Does the above sound like the over educated wannabe's who decided a working city with a proven transportation grid (that was corrected when proved not to work) was NOT in the best interests of the people?
Think about it. Are you at that point where over 40 years of change because it is "organic" has led the city to a crushed economy, literally telling the tourists go away unless you can spend more money, money that the changed atmosphere no longer sustains?
They have morphed...... and want the failed Luddite experiment to replace their failure with 7 story high rise buildings????????
The failure of the name change to "Strong" is ironic since they are anything but.
When they fail and the drive by media punts on 3rd down there has to be "hey what about"..... When they buy worker bees that could not make it on their own here should that also not be brought to attention?
There is a fine line. The opposition is once again stating "not enough was done" even in the face abject failure. They use un-informed people, stating we are you. A statement of intentional misdirection.
Where is the line? There are 2 directions back away or if you have the money bury with repeated facts the drive by's don't want to engage in.
When the masses are desperate, they will turn to such extremist causes. A lot of today's young people don't have the hope us older people did. Simple concept, too simple for many to grasp. Good luck.
I read this "Confidential Human Source" (CHS) article titled "Origins of ANTIFA"
By Robert Eringer. I have another title "Confidential Human Sources in Santa
Barbara Uncovering Evil." I quote from Mr. Eringer's article "In 2001, I infiltrated Portland’s Earth Liberation Front (ELF) for the FBI. AND "My “book infiltration model” had precedent and worked like a charm" AND "The Bureau didn’t bite. They wanted indictments, not experiments."
Mr. Eringer was the FBI Intelligence Branch in Santa Barbara looking for Indictments?
Were there CHS's in Santa Barbara "Infiltrating" to obtain Indictments in our Lil Ole Beach Town?
Dan Bongino "If you are a Corrupt Politician ..... we are going to find you."
There are plenty of Corrupt Politicians in CALI and the FBI has found them.
Who is Antifa? If I was to take a guess on the profile of many Antifa members, I would surmise the following:
Overwhelming white with few minorities, overly educated with many having college degrees, vegan, introverted, narcissistic, atheist-anti-Christian sentiment, animal rights activists, overwhelmingly liberal ideology, LGBTQ tendencies, climate change activists, proclivity towards violence, familiarity with Marxism, the communist manifesto and Saul Alinsky teachings, “Free Palestine” advocacy and lastly, estranged from family members.
The precursor to Antifa in my opinion, was that of the “Greenpeace” movement, whereas violence is justified in defense of the planet.
Regardless of the motivation or causation, these criminals and anarchists need to be infiltrated, investigated and rounded up for prosecution with special attention given to the money stream sources and prosecuted to the maximum extent of federal law. Just as the Justice Department has done in the past with like minded dangerous groups: American Nazi Party, Klu Klux Klan, American Communist Party, Black Panthers, Weather Underground, Hells Angels and La Cosa Nostra.
When I was a little kid growing up in the 60’s, there was always at least one kid who didn’t seem to fit in. Tragically, these kids were typically bullied and picked on. Often times terms like; weird, strange, nerd were used. The hurtful term “queer” was first associated with someone who was odd and had nothing to do with sexuality until later.
I would submit antisocial behavior begins in elementary school during the most formidable period of socialization and what Maslow hypothesized as the “Hierarchy of Needs.”
Wow, Robert, thank you. We need more articles like this because too many Santa Barbarans are very very ignorant about Antifa and defend it. I have a question. How did the Left take over what was originally anti-globalist and turn it into what it into the globalist/Marxist army it is today? My husband I were living in NYC during Occupy Wall Street and went to join the protest. As my husband says it was a carnival of protest against Wall Street misdeeds, from the left, right and center. There were the early Antifa types there, but they were so different than what we see now. Then during the Obama years we joined a Union Square protest against his NSA policies. The Left tried to take it over. We applauded that the organizers of it shooed those assholes out. And btw, we saw none of our liberal NYC media friends there. They didn't approve of protesting against Saint Barack. (I voted for him twice, but the Obama years drove me out of the Democratic Party.) Thank you.
Wall Street needed fingers pointed at it.
Let’s not forget the causation of the 2008 meltdown as a predicate of the sub prime mortgage crisis. Putting people in homes they can’t afford in order to score cheap political points led to financial disaster, which we all are paying for.
No, home ownership is not a right! Sadly, that dream is gone for many young families, especially here locally.
https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/subprime-mortgage-crisis
None of the protestors at OWS that I talked to would have disagreed with you. And I talked to no one who was there in, say, the way that people are at a No Kings march through being worked up. They were very informed people. There are always two protests — one you're in and one you read about,
This is why you make me happy to see you here, elce. You always contribute so much rational informed thinking.
Btw, your view of it is much the same as our media friends at the time. And I came to view those friends as not people I could trust on what they said or wrote.
WE need to straighten out their thinking by NOT letting them do what they are doing!
Great article. Have you written a book of your stories?
Insightful and enlightening. Thank you for sharing your experiences. Blessings
Fascinating piece.
Robert - thank you! You’ve done something James Bond wanna-be’s don’t do - infiltrate the enemy & give us an inside look at the Antifa Freaka’s.
Rosebraugh was presumably - ‘public relations/press office’ rather than being part of their sabotage cells. Just as, if not more dangerous than the jerks carrying out their ‘missions’.
You were so right about the Montana farm, “But the Bureau didn’t bite. They wanted indictments, not experiments. Had they let me run the farm, we could have owned the movement.” Turning down the opportunity of getting the enemy together in one place to figure out how to crush them - short-sighted thinking.
‘What Craig Rosebraugh — America’s “number-one domestic terrorist”— needed most, I thought, was a hug.” yeah - with a noose
Btw - Rosebraugh’s book ‘Burning Rage of a Dying Planet’ is avail on Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/mrzwt27h
Excellent job Robert!
I always love reading about your days of infiltration in enemy camps. I wish Radcliffe and Patel would listen to some of your stories and use your experience to do some of the same.
I think your view here is too narrow. I recall the 60s, Peoples Liberation Front, Weather Underground, Black Panthers.... There were groups promoting violence, and there was much violence, but there were also many people who deplored violence but realized that the basic ideas behind these groups were, for the most part, pretty good. End the Vietnam war, civil rights, women's rights, and so on. Basically, any period of large scale social change is going to produce a violent fringe on both sides (the KKK, beginnings of the Aryan Nations). It's a natural human phenomenon. The groups that promote violence will often be parasitic on the more tempered but much larger movements. A couple of good reads by Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing give some idea about this: Prisons We Choose to Live Inside (a series of radio lectured from 1985) and The Sentimental Agents (a satirical novel on the human tendency to rally to support causes). Interestingly, there was almost no violence in the No Kings protests despite their size, and there were no arrests of No Kings protesters. The few arrests that did occur were MAGA types trying to attack them.
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/comparative-analysis-violent-left-and-right-wing-extremist-groups
“Peoples Liberation Front, Weather Underground, Black Panthers.... the basic ideas behind these groups were, for the most part, pretty good.” Are you kidding - they should have all been hung!
Are you incapable of separating the ideas from the means? Or did you just get triggered by the terms and not get what I was saying?
Wow. Not the deep dive I was hoping for. While extremely interesting, very shallow and somewhat dishonest. If you want to demonize ELF for using violent tactics, shouldn't you also own up to the use of violent tactics by your own groups you worked for, the FBI and CIA? Who killed Fred Hampton? LaVoy Finicum? Patrice Lumumba? Ngo Diem? Muamar Gaddafi? These are not the only concerning examples.
It is dishonest to say "direct action" means violence. I was an antiwar activist and anti globalization activist that was in large demonstrations with such people. People who advocated the harming of other human beings were immediately suspected of being agents provocateur or Feds. Some people felt direct action included property destruction, some felt it did not. To claim that direct action is necessarily personal violence or property destruction is not true. The mass actions did not and would self-police anyone trying to be violent or even those destroying property. I can't speak for now, but in the period Robert is writing about, direct action included things like large protests, sit-ins, disrupting speakers, blockading an intersection or event, and creating independent media. Think direct as in diy rather than trust the bought elected representatives, the corrupt media, or corporate experts.
As an antiwar activist raised on Catholic morality, I reject all personal violence, but I continue to be struck by the hypocrisy. Benjamin Netanyahu is overseeing a blatant genocide on our dime with our elected representatives and administration coerced into protecting and funding, but he is fine to be invited on talk shows and lavished standing ovations by our Congress. But we are supposed to look down on this guy for working with people who spike trees in an old growth forest and for writing a discussion about armed struggle? Did you know international law and Catholic teaching both permit armed struggle in certain circumstances? I will agree that putting the lives of workers in danger to protect the environment by tree spiking is wrong, but it is just a little rich to hear the condemnation come from a man who worked for the CIA and FBI. Tell us, Robert Eringer, is it wrong to use violence to advance a political agenda? Or only when ELF does it?
The real history of ANTIFA goes back to Jewish violent resistance groups in Europe in the wake of WWI. Might want to start there.
I believe that each constituency within ANTIFA has goals which can attract rational people, although the means of achieving the goal can be condemned. What concerns me the most is why are groups with quite different goals e.g. environmental, economic , race based, global issues, working in concert. What ideology or overriding goal would want to combine the various ANTIFA groups?
That is the question that needs to be answered. Many of us know what that answer is. Berney
Hmmm…good insight into spy tradecraft, but my understanding is Antifa goes back to the German Nazis days…
WHY DOES THE ANTIFA FLAG MIMIC THAT OF THE NAZIS?
COINCIDENCE?
https://x.com/fnowisthetime/status/1983237435392921702?s=57
https://x.com/fnowisthetime/status/1983237733217907184?s=61
Was 'Nazism' ever truly destroyed?
"These are smart people, educated people and it runs like a cell right out of the anti-fascist tradecraft books of Europe in the 1970s, it doesn't have a head or hierarchy, but it has a lot of local leadership," the government insider explained. "The local apparatus has very good intelligence capabilities, but where their weaknesses are is in communication and using apps that allow for large group chats."
https://www.foxnews.com/us/antifa-arrests-coming-riots-suburbs
Welcome to the no borders, pro pedo, destroy ICE, socialist movement - ANTIFA (arm of Democratic Party)…
This paper will go out of business soon.
Lol. I guess you're referring to the lack of real estate and plastic surgery ads that Santa Barbara's other papers have.
Whaaaaat?
They’re just a bunch of out-of-control wannabe “rebels” in the throes of recycling someone else’s “revolution”— same anger, different hashtag."""""""""""""""""""
Does the above sound like the over educated wannabe's who decided a working city with a proven transportation grid (that was corrected when proved not to work) was NOT in the best interests of the people?
Think about it. Are you at that point where over 40 years of change because it is "organic" has led the city to a crushed economy, literally telling the tourists go away unless you can spend more money, money that the changed atmosphere no longer sustains?
They have morphed...... and want the failed Luddite experiment to replace their failure with 7 story high rise buildings????????
The failure of the name change to "Strong" is ironic since they are anything but.
Undue attention???
When they fail and the drive by media punts on 3rd down there has to be "hey what about"..... When they buy worker bees that could not make it on their own here should that also not be brought to attention?
There is a fine line. The opposition is once again stating "not enough was done" even in the face abject failure. They use un-informed people, stating we are you. A statement of intentional misdirection.
Where is the line? There are 2 directions back away or if you have the money bury with repeated facts the drive by's don't want to engage in.
handing you back the political soap box...
I am amazed! Only one subject, much easier to follow. OK so who’s the leader, where’s their home base?
When the masses are desperate, they will turn to such extremist causes. A lot of today's young people don't have the hope us older people did. Simple concept, too simple for many to grasp. Good luck.
I read this "Confidential Human Source" (CHS) article titled "Origins of ANTIFA"
By Robert Eringer. I have another title "Confidential Human Sources in Santa
Barbara Uncovering Evil." I quote from Mr. Eringer's article "In 2001, I infiltrated Portland’s Earth Liberation Front (ELF) for the FBI. AND "My “book infiltration model” had precedent and worked like a charm" AND "The Bureau didn’t bite. They wanted indictments, not experiments."
Mr. Eringer was the FBI Intelligence Branch in Santa Barbara looking for Indictments?
Were there CHS's in Santa Barbara "Infiltrating" to obtain Indictments in our Lil Ole Beach Town?
Dan Bongino "If you are a Corrupt Politician ..... we are going to find you."
There are plenty of Corrupt Politicians in CALI and the FBI has found them.
https://x.com/MAGAARMY_/status/1981076501857726604
Howard Walther Member of a Military Family
PS1- Any Public Corruption Sealed Indictments in CALI?
Who is Antifa? If I was to take a guess on the profile of many Antifa members, I would surmise the following:
Overwhelming white with few minorities, overly educated with many having college degrees, vegan, introverted, narcissistic, atheist-anti-Christian sentiment, animal rights activists, overwhelmingly liberal ideology, LGBTQ tendencies, climate change activists, proclivity towards violence, familiarity with Marxism, the communist manifesto and Saul Alinsky teachings, “Free Palestine” advocacy and lastly, estranged from family members.
The precursor to Antifa in my opinion, was that of the “Greenpeace” movement, whereas violence is justified in defense of the planet.
Regardless of the motivation or causation, these criminals and anarchists need to be infiltrated, investigated and rounded up for prosecution with special attention given to the money stream sources and prosecuted to the maximum extent of federal law. Just as the Justice Department has done in the past with like minded dangerous groups: American Nazi Party, Klu Klux Klan, American Communist Party, Black Panthers, Weather Underground, Hells Angels and La Cosa Nostra.
You forgot polyamorous. And also, my favorite — vegans for late term abortion.
When I was a little kid growing up in the 60’s, there was always at least one kid who didn’t seem to fit in. Tragically, these kids were typically bullied and picked on. Often times terms like; weird, strange, nerd were used. The hurtful term “queer” was first associated with someone who was odd and had nothing to do with sexuality until later.
I would submit antisocial behavior begins in elementary school during the most formidable period of socialization and what Maslow hypothesized as the “Hierarchy of Needs.”
https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html