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Right Wing Death Squad
Far-right slogan From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Right Wing Death Squad, often abbreviated to RWDS, is a slogan used in the 21st century by far-right Americans. The term was first used in the 1970s to describe Latin American paramilitaries who targeted their left-wing opponents.
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The term was first used in the 1970s to describe Latin American paramilitary death squads who targeted left-wing opponents.[1] The death squad dropped the leftists out of helicopters. They were called the "death flights".[2]
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From the 2010s onwards, the term was used in the U.S. by far-right extremists. The term, often abbreviated to RWDS is used in memes,[3] in online forums, on clothing, patches, and stickers.[1] The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism attribute the terms' popularity to usage by the American neo-fascist organisation the Proud Boys. The slogan is often accompanied by the words "Pinochet Did Nothing Wrong"[4] and the abbreviation RWDS is used as a hashtag #RWDS.[5]
The slogan was used by attendees of the 2017 Unite the Right rally white supremacist event in Charlottesville, Virginia.[1] This violent rally staged the death of one woman from the counterprotesters group because a white supremacist drove into the crowd intentionally.
Some groups were created with names resembling RWDS, prompting Facebook to block multiple pages due to their hateful content.[6][7] A 2019 Facebook group called Right Wing Death Squad was monitored by the FBI due to the violent, anti-semitic, and white supremacist content being posted.[8]
Mauricio Garcia, the perpetrator of the 2023 Allen, Texas outlet mall shooting wore a RWDS patch when he killed eight people.[9] After the shooting, former Proud Boys regional leader Jeremy Bertino[10] spoke of his regret about wearing a Right Wing Death Squad patch.[11]
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