AOC Still Cute, But This Plump, Pasty, Gun-Grabbing Ginger Here...., Really?

dcist |  A planned gun rally in Richmond, Va. on Monday has prompted Governor Ralph Northam to declare a state of emergency in the commonwealth’s capital, citing “credible intelligence” that many of the demonstrators “may be armed, and have as their purpose not peaceful assembly but violence, rioting, and insurrection.” Northam instituted a temporary ban on firearms on State Capitol grounds in anticipation of the demonstration.

But he’s not the only Virginia politician fearful that the protests slated for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in Richmond could result in a dangerous clash like the fatal Charlottesville Unite the Right rally in 2017.

Facing a series of death threats, Manassas Delegate Lee Carter says he will spend Monday at a safe house instead of the state house, as first reported by Gen.

The threats against Carter—a Democratic Socialist first elected in 2017—also show how an echo chamber of conspiracy theories that begin as social media posts get laundered into mainstream outlets like the Wall Street Journal, and can ultimately lead to real-world peril.

Monday’s rally is a tradition for the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a pro-gun group that lobbies each year in Richmond on Martin Luther King Jr. Day while bearing arms. But this year, a large number of armed militia groups have pledged to join the rally. Northam tweeted that “intelligence suggests militia groups and hate groups, some from out of state, plan to come to the Capitol to disrupt our democratic process with acts of violence.”

At least some of the people who say they’re coming have described it as a “boogaloo,” a word used by the far-right to describe a violent civil war, according to the Daily Beast. This morning, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested three suspected members of a neo-Nazi hate group who were considering going to Virginia’s capital for the rally and had more than 1,500 rounds of rifle ammunition, per prosecutors, the New York Times reported.

As these protesters get ready to descend on Richmond, Carter is planning to be at an undisclosed location amid concerns over his safety.

“People were threatening to murder me and murder my family over something I’m not even doing,” Carter tells DCist from Richmond on Wednesday evening. “These threats are more hateful and more numerous than anything I’ve seen before. I mean, I’m the only socialist elected to a legislature in the south, so I do occasionally get waves of death threats—about every two three months it’ll happen—but this one is far larger and far more serious than anything I’ve seen before by orders of magnitude.” Carter has reported the threats to the Virginia Capitol Police.