Let’s call a spade a spade. “Swatting” — that’s putting in a false emergency call to law enforcement, so they send a SWAT team round to some poor sucker’s house — is attempted murder. It’s a blatant form of intimidation, designed at the very least to make the victim’s life a misery, and at worst to put them in a situation where they might easily end up being gunned down by police. When swattings are carried out in a determined, organized manner, then it’s a campaign of terror, and those individuals and groups who are coordinating it should be treated as orchestrators of terror — as terrorists.
No ifs, no buts.
WATERTOWN, MA – APRIL 19: SWAT team members search for one remaining suspect at a residential building on April 19, 2013 in Watertown, Massachusetts. Earlier, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus police officer was shot and killed at the school’s campus in Cambridge. A short time later, police reported exchanging gunfire with alleged carjackers in Watertown, a city near Cambridge. According to reports, one suspect has been killed during a car chase and the police are seeking another – believed to be the same person (known as Suspect Two) wanted in connection with the deadly bombing at the Boston Marathon earlier this week. Police have confirmed that the dead assailant is Suspect One from the recently released marathon bombing photographs. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Here’s what being swatted actually looks like. Larry Taunton, a conservative influencer with a large following on Twitter, was in bed with his wife at about 1am last Sunday morning when he noticed his dog had become agitated. All of a sudden, the dog followed a flicker of light to the front door, and Taunton was close behind, gun in hand. As he reached the kitchen, he saw a man in body armor wielding a rifle. The man was attempting to open the door into the house, “I’m thinking, if that man comes through my door, I’m going to light him up,” Taunton told CNN. “Because you’re just thinking, ‘Somebody’s here to murder me and my wife.’”
There were three police officers, all armed. They told him they had received a report that hooded men were killing people in the house. Of course, it wasn’t true.
Thankfully, Taunton didn’t open fire or do anything to make the police officers open fire.
Other victims of swattings haven’t been so lucky.
In 2017, Andrew Finch, of Wichita, Kansas, was shot and killed at his front door after being swatted. The cause of the hoax call was an argument over an online video game — which turned out not to have involved Finch at all. In 2019, three men were sentenced to prison for their role in his death.
Even the fear caused by a swatting can kill, as 60-year-old Mark Herring found out in April of 2020. He died of a heart attack when police were sent to his home in Tennessee. He was swatted because somebody wanted him to give up his Twitter handle, if you can believe such a thing.
Swattings have had a political bent to them for some time, usually directed at figures on the right rather than the left, but in recent weeks we’ve seen a spate of swattings involving prominent right-wing figures. It could be just a series of unrelated incidents — spiteful leftists all having the same evil idea — or it could be copycats, or it could be something yet more sinister: an orchestrated campaign designed to cause fear among the population on a wider scale. Terrorism, like I said.
We don’t know just yet, but we need to know.
Some of the victims are colleagues of mine at Infowars, who are still reeling from the brutal, senseless murder of our co-worker and friend Jamie White, the circumstances of which — botched robbery? professional hit? — still aren’t clear. Chase Geiser, host of Sunday Night Live, has been swatted, and so has Owen Shroyer, host of the War Room. Chase and Owen are tough dudes, and they’ve taken it in their stride, but that hardly makes it better. Their lives are under threat.
The Trump administration appears to be taking notice. This week, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem tweeted that she would “not sit idly by as conservative new media and their families are being targeted by false swatting.”
She warned that the DHS “has the ability to trace phone numbers and track location information. We will use it to hunt these cowards down. This is an attack on our law enforcement and innocent families and we will prosecute it as such.”
That’s a point worth remembering: Swattings put law enforcement at risk too.
FBI Director Kash Patel added his support, tweeting that the FBI is “already taking action to investigate and hold those responsible accountable.”
“This isn’t about politics,” he added. “Weaponizing law enforcement against ANY American is not only morally reprehensible but also endangers lives, including those of our officers. That will not be tolerated.”
Regardless of whether these swattings are unconnected or being organized in tandem, they fit a broader pattern that’s emerging as a result of the left’s historic failure in the 2024 election. The establishment left — the Democratic Party and the various political and civil society groups that have dominated leftist politics for years — are in total disarray. Nearly a decade of mobilization, of taking to the streets in pussy hats with stupid placards and shouting and screaming at their right-wing opponents, has failed.
Trump is in the White House again and he’s more popular, and more radical than ever. His first two months back in office have seen unthinkable things happen, from the end of birthright citizenship and the militarization of the southern border, to the wholesale destruction of deep-state organs like USAID and the deportation of foreign gang members to Guantanamo Bay and the equally hellish CECOT prison in El Salvador. (RELATED: RAW EGG NATIONALIST: All That Glitters Is Not Gold — And That Includes Trump’s New Visa Scheme)
All that’s left by way of resistance, for now, is individual or small-scale action. And Trump’s enemies have a perfect model for that: Luigi Mangione, the guy who assassinated the CEO of United Healthcare. The “Mangione model,” as I like to call it, offers the promise of satisfaction — of actually “doing something” — by going straight to the heart of the problem and bypassing all that ineffective, wearisome political stuff.
The ringleaders of the recent attacks on Tesla cars and showrooms have named Mangione as an inspiration, and so did Ryan Michael English, a transgender man who tried to assassinate Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and burn down the Heritage Foundation.
I keep saying, in article after article, to pay attention to all the Mangione-worship that’s taking place, because I believe Mangione will be the defining figure for leftist opposition to Trump over the next four years. And that means people are going to get hurt. (RELATED: BARR: Stop The Luigi Mangione Madness)
So what can be done about swattings? At the very least, those who organize them, individually or in groups, should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Their actions should be treated in the maximal sense as an intended threat to life — as attempted murder. Nothing less.
For his part in swatting Andrew Finch, Casey Viner was only sentenced to 15 months in prison. But Casey Viner killed Andrew Finch. Viner’s age — just 19 years old — was no excuse, nor could anybody reasonably plead ignorance about what might happen when you send heavily armed police to somebody’s house to stop what they think is a serious crime from taking place. Viner should have got a much heftier sentence.
The people who are swatting my colleagues at Infowars and other conservative figures know exactly what they’re doing. Which is why they should pay the heaviest possible price for it. And if there is evidence these swattings are connected, if there is a network behind them, the full weight of the government’s anti-terror apparatus should be used to crush it.
It’s time to call a spade a spade and act accordingly.
Raw Egg Nationalist is the pen name of Dr. Charles Cornish-Dale, an Oxford- and Cambridge-educated medieval historian and anthropologist. He is the author of the ‘Raw Egg Nationalism Cookbook,’ ‘The Eggs Benedict Option,’ and the editor of MAN’S WORLD.
