FOX ASKS QANON-ADJACENT SECURITY FIRM TO EXPLAIN ANTIFA FOR US

Will there be unrest once the voting is over? Seeking an answer to this question, Hollie McKay of Fox News turned to the head of a little-known security firm. McKay's "expert" had some predictions that seem a tad paranoid.

“Our intelligence shows that no matter who wins the election, they [Antifa] are planning a massive ‘Antifa Tet Offensive,’ bent on destroying the global order they are not beholden to any one party,” Robert Lewis told Fox News. “Their sole purpose is to create havoc, fear, and intimidation.”

An "Antifa Tet Offensive"? And why should we trust Lewis's alleged intel?

Lewis is a former U.S. Army Green Beret and founder of First Amendment Praetorian (1AP), a crowdfunded, volunteer force of military, law enforcement, and intel agency community professionals “standing up to protect the First Amendment and those who use it.”

1AP bills itself as a team dedicated to providing "intelligence and security services to protect grassroots events from fear of outside agitators and disruptors" with the purpose of "making patriotic and religious events safe again."

"We specifically focus on grassroots religious or political events. Larger companies can afford to hire their own security and intelligence teams, but we want the smaller and grassroots organizations to be able to keep safe," Lewis said.

So this is starting to seem like one of those CNBC segments that's pure publicity for the interviewee's company. But go on, Hollie. What else does Lewis say?

Lewis said that while they started primarily as a security service, efforts on intel collection have ramped up in recent months, which includes a significant number of their volunteers quietly "embedding" with Antifa-like wings. Their intel efforts, he said, have also brought to life a trove of documents that indicate Antifa is far from a hodge-podge, spur-of-the-moment mobilization.

"We use the traditional intelligence fusion cycle – planning and direction, collection, processing, analysis and production, dissemination, re-evaluation. We are currently in the Collection phase, and we have HUMINT, SIGINT, OSINT, and TECHINT capabilities," he continued.

You know he's telling the truth because he uses a lot of intelligence-y words, just the way he would if this were a bad movie.

"And like any network, the [Antifa] planning and funding comes from a few main sources and people, and then is splintered, filtered, and laundered out to their many 'affinity groups' to maintain the 'no organization lie.'"

In the report breakdown of one Washington, D.C., event helmed by the volunteer group in October, personnel depicted Antifa as having "organizers, spotters, people to probe our defenses and operatives who changed clothes multiple times at the event to try and evade detection."

"They also attempted to launch PSYOPS and, if you believe it, tried (once again) to insert a false Russian collusion / operative narrative via an 'actor' at the event," 1AP states. "The most interesting part is when they start fake fights with each other to try and draw onlookers into the fray."

Lewis also maintains that Antifa is "much more advanced than people give them credit for in terms of intelligence collection and counterintelligence" and that they are "frequently changing their Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) and logistics."

"For anyone who believes Antifa is just a grassroots idea and their attacks are organic, we have a simple answer: do organic, spur of the moment movements and actions need logistics?" he continued, citing multiple open-source documents that point to "having a comprehensive funding and planning group, a PR group and logistics."

Omigod! All this is in "multiple open-source documents"! So it must be true!

This is what all of your Trump-voting relatives believe about antifa. It's not 24-year-olds with no money. It's a highly organized group of Bond supervillains who could be under your bed right now and you wouldn't even know it.

1st Amendment Praetorian's website has a melodramatic landing page...

... but also quite a few sub-pages marked CONTENT PENDING.

You can sign up to volunteer at the site, and you can donate -- though not via PayPal, apparently.

Since @paypal decided to unperson us, we now accept #bitcoin and #ethereum to fund our operations!

Please RT and spread the word!

BTC: 12XsPJCv8qbnD8uJiEix48ckgD2v66eAir
ETH: 0x05E43A01106A4E4355B095F69a16db40808DEFf0 pic.twitter.com/wvss0rHira

— 1st Amendment Praetorian (@1st_praetorian) October 23, 2020

I wonder what the story behind that is.

Robert Lewis, the head of 1st Amendment Praetorian, says in his Twitter biography that in addition to being an ex-Green Beret, he's an "entrepreneur, political junkie, investor & MBA." He's also the author of "The Pact Trilogy," which consists of ... um, two novels:

Lewis implies that he's an International Man of Mystery, prepared to do work involving multi-national threats, but his firm mostly seems to be protecting ad hoc Trump rallies -- a car caravan here, a "Walk Away" rally there. He must need more work because he's letting the QAnon folks know his company is available.

He seems to have the right belief system for the Q crowd.

EMPs: our defense tech is capable of protecting from this attack vector

— 1st Amendment Praetorian (@1st_praetorian) November 1, 2020

That's Fox's expert on Antifa. And then Chris Wallace says something semi-intelligent and we all pretend that Fox is a legitimate news organization.