Cliven Bundy

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“”We're here to take our state back and act like we’re sovereign citizens[.]

—Cliven Bundy

Cliven "Y'all Qaida" Bundy (1946–) is a rancher from southeastern Nevada who was involved in a twenty-year-old legal dispute with the United States federal government over unpaid grazing fees of cattle on government-owned land which ultimately culminated in an armed standoff in March 2014. He became a hero to the lunatic fringe virtually overnight. But he subsequently began to mutter about how blacks were better off under slavery, but by then he had already been lionized as a kindly old gentleman gallantly fighting back against 'the system', and that image stuck.

Bundy believes that the U.S. government does not have a right to control the land on which he grazes his cows, arguing that:

“”[...] at the moment of Statehood land inside the new State is no longer U.S. Territory, and no longer does U.S. Congress or any of the federal agencies have authority to dispose of the land or make any rules or regulations respecting to it.

—Cliven Bundy railing against the federal government on his personal blog

Bundy has further argued that "he is a citizen of Nevada and not a citizen of a territory of the United States." The United States, and Nevada, beg to differ, as that's not how US laws work. Not even close. The U.S. government states that it obtained the land where Bundy illegally grazes his cattle in 1848 as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

Now watch the U.S. pussyfoot around these terrorists modern-day Minutemen fighting back against the tide of Obama's cultural Marxism.

In February 2016 Bundy was arrested by the FBI, facing numerous felony charges over his past antics. However, these were dismissed on December 20, 2017, and later was upheld by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on August 6th, 2020.

Background

Cliven Bundy, definitely not a citizen of the United States.

Bundy stopped paying his grazing lease in 1993. Since then, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has been trying to have Bundy remove his illegally-pastured cattle from federal land. This happened after the BLM initiated conservation efforts to try to protect the desert tortoise in designated areas, mostly by re-purchasing previous grazing permits. Bundy responded to this by ranging his cattle pretty much wherever he wanted on BLM-held land.

The area where Bundy is located is known for aggression against federal authorities, and the BLM tried to avoid an armed Waco- or Ruby Ridge-style standoff with Bundy.

Militia movement supporters

“”We did some research online with PsyID today, and found that there’s about 10 or 15 percent of the people who are talking about this online that are truly frightening. They don’t care what the facts are. They just want a fight.

—Glenn Beck comes to fear his own creation.

Some 1000 members of various right-wing militias from across the country came out in support of Bundy. Some of these were snipers positioned to shoot at federal authorities. The courageous militiamen concocted a plan to place women in front of the snipers so they would be shot at first, to increase sympathy for their cause.

Operation Mutual Aid Militia, founded in 2014, provided over 150 armed militiamen for Bundy's defense.

After the standoff ended in their favor, the militias declared victory and began using the event to aggressively recruit new members. One group, Arizona State Militia, claims to have received more than 100 new applicants in 72 hours.

This did not necessarily mean he got away with it. In January 2016, his sons Ammo Ammon and Ryan, as well as some buddies, decided to escalate the wingnuttery by taking over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon (which they had no claim over) in protest of two other ranchers (Dwight Hammond Jr. and his son, Steven) getting arrested on charges of arson. They wanted the feds to give back all the land to the "people", never mind that the people already own the land. Cliven himself eventually flew up to Oregon to support his kids, but he was rather quickly arrested in a Portland airport by the FBI once they'd caught word. At this time of writing, he has been indicted by a federal grand jury on numerous felony charges, and has been denied bail. The standoff itself mostly ended not in a blaze of patriotic glory, but with an FBI blockade and most of the militia surrendering save Lavoy "Tarpman" Finicum, who waved a pistol at FBI agents and was thus shot to death.

Screwed-up politics

The incident with Bundy has also revealed the utter fucked-upness of American race politics and policing. His supporters advocate for the open carry of firearms both at home and at the ranch that openly threatened federal agents and forced them to back off. After this incident, numerous African-American open-carry advocates began to demonstrate how differently they were treated while openly carrying firearms (even if they weren't threatening anyone)—including a few videos showing officers drawing their weapons and ordering the advocates onto the ground while threatening to fire, rather than just having a polite, fucking decent conversation if an advocate who was white did the very same. To make matters worse, during the same news cycle multiple African-Americans (including the 12-year-old Tamir Rice) were shot and killed in public by police while carrying toy guns, all without having the chance to do so much as obey the cops' orders.

Stopped clock

See the main article on this topic: Stopped clock

In a few stopped clock moments, however, Ammon Bundy has voiced his support for Black Lives Matter (not to be confused with the Bureau of Land Management, which he has a grudge against). Bundy also (surprisingly) criticized Donald Trump's Great Wall of America, as well as the historically-unpopular president's uncharitable views on immigrants. These statements make the Bundys one of the few right-leaning libertarians who despise "Big government" consistently, and with no hypocrisy.

Ammon vs. St. Luke's

Ammon fought the hospital... the hospital won.

In March 2022, St. Luke's Boise Medical Center temporarily removed a baby from his parents (and raised a custody case) after health authorities determined that the baby was severely malnourished, potentially signaling that the child had been mistreated. Unfortunately for the hospital, the grandfather of this baby was Diego Rodriguez, who was associated with Cliven's son Ammon Bundy. Ammon Bundy was infuriated by the news, and wrote online exaggerated bullshit about the situation, such as stating that the baby was "kidnapped", that the hospital was working with the Idaho government to take children from Christian families to be sexually abused by gay couples, and that the state was engaged in "child trafficking". Ammon Bundy and his followers then used similar scorched-earth tactics that Cliven used with the wildlife refuge in order to challenge the hospital and the child custody case: protests at multiple Boise Idaho locations (including encouraging protesters to swarm and protest in front of the private homes of police officers and judges), harassment, and doxxing of people involved in the custody case. Due to a security threat from the protesters, St. Luke's went into lockdown for more than an hour on March 15 2022.

In response to the bullying, intimidation, and disruption, St. Luke's filed a lawsuit against Bundy, Rodriguez, and their organizations, accusing them of false statements, defamation, and trespassing. Predictably, Bundy and Rodriguez refused to respond to the lawsuit, ignored all court orders, and continued to make defamatory statements online. In late September 2022, this resulted in a contempt of court ruling.

In July 2023, the verdict for the defamation trial was announced: a jury agreed with St. Luke's, and awarded the hospital damages exceeding $50 million. Bundy notably did not attend this trial nor hire a lawyer to represent him.

Bundy continue to defy the courts; in fact, after the verdict, he started moving assets around in an attempt to evade paying any fines from the lawsuit (shenanigans that resulted in an injunction from the court). In November 2023, the Idaho courts finally had enough of Ammon's bullshit and issued an arrest warrant after he yet again failed to attend a mandatory court appearance. By December 2023, St. Luke's was able to get many of the defamatory websites and YouTube videos booted off the Internet and had confiscated Ammon Bundy's house; reports also emerged that Ammon Bundy had fled Idaho. In late March 2024, the investigative journalism group Bellingcat determined that Ammon had fled to Washington County, Utah.

See also

• Terrorism#Right-wing terrorism

External links

• Ammon Bundy's lawyer argues for his client's right to wear cowboy boots at trial