Big flap on the border: conspiranoid terrorists/Trump supporters force indefinite closing of National Butterfly Center in Rio Grande Valley

The domestic terrorists are at it again: threats from QAnon conspiranoids and radicalized Trumpsters have forced the 100-acre National Butterfly Center, located in a former onion field along the U.S.-Mexico border in Mission, Texas, to close indefinitely. As reported by The Texas Tribune on February 2, 2022 and elsewhere, the 20-year-old butterfly center has been targeted at least since 2019 by these wackadoodle conspiracy-porn addicts, who have falsely tied the organization to human trafficking.

Never mind that there are zero law enforcement investigations into the organization, or any of its staff members, for human trafficking. Facts don't matter to these zealots. The center's executive director, Marianna Treviño-Wright, said, "They tell these lies in a variety of forms through all of their channels to promote stochastic terrorism."

The trouble most likely began in 2017 when the butterfly center filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, arguing that proposed construction of the infamous border wall would drive through the center and decimate butterfly habitats. Treviño-Wright suspects that this is what initially attracted the attention of the conspiranoids. (The lawsuit is still ongoing in federal court.)

But a Trumpster/con artist/troll named Brian Kolfage really got the ball rolling in 2019, when he tweeted out false rumors accusing Treviño-Wright of human trafficking. In November of that year, Kolfage and his group, We Build The Wall, began clearing land next to the nature preserve to build a private crowdfunded wall along the border. (In August of 2020, I published a post about Kolfage and his crowdfunding wallscam and vicious trolling -- not to mention his indictment (along with luminaries such as Steve Bannon) for the scam.)

The National Butterfly Center opposed the construction of the wall, citing that it not only violated international treaties but would also be detrimental to the center's ecology. And that's when the attacks from Kolfage began. The following month, the National Butterfly Center obtained a temporary restraining order against Kolfage and his scammy hatriot organization, and then filed a lawsuit claiming defamation and disparagement.

Not surprisingly, the harassment did not stop after the lawsuit was filed. Treviño-Wright claims that she has been the subject of threats via phone, email, and Twitter since then. And late last month, a fringe right-wing congressional candidate from Virginia, Kimberly Lowe, paid a visit to the butterfly center, demanding that the center give her access to the river "to see all the illegals crossing on the raft." Treviño-Wright says that when she asked Lowe to leave the premises, Lowe tackled her. The Daily Beast posted an interesting report about this incident on January 28, 2022. You need to read it.

This past weekend, the center closed during the We Stand America border security rally after a former state representative informed Treviño-Wright that the place could be a target during the rally. She was advised that she should either stay well-armed or that she should just get out of town. Avid Trumpsters attending the rally did in fact stop at the butterfly sanctuary, and a contributor to the ultra-right site Real America's Voice posted a clip on Twitter, repeating the spurious sex-trafficking claims.

Finally on Wednesday, February 2, the butterfly center closed again, this time indefinitely, citing safety concerns for both staff and public.

If that's not terrorism in your book, then clearly we are reading very different books.

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Arguably this saga really began in 2016 with "Pizzagate," the well-known whacked-out conspiranoid narrative claiming that the (nonexistent) basement of a Washington, DC pizza restaurant was the site of a child abuse ring spearheaded by then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and other demonic Democrats. As stupid as that narrative was and is, it was enough to get loads of folks fired up, including a North Carolina man who, armed with an assault rifle, paid a visit to the pizza joint in an effort to investigate the matter.

In the wake of Pizzagate, the far-right conspiracy movement QAnon emerged from the fever swamps of the imageboard website 4chan, building on a narrative about a worldwide cabal of Satanic, cannibalistic pedophiles (especially Democrats and liberal elites!) who operate a sex trafficking ring and who have engaged in wicked conspiracies against #NotMyPresident Donald Trump. And the rest, unfortunately, is history in the making, as QAnon and a general conspiranoid, untethered-from-reality mindset have spread their poison across the right-wing political landscape. What once was fringe is now all too mainstream.

And it's not getting any better. Today a butterfly center, tomorrow... who knows? More than ever, domestic terrorism is a thing, and most of it exists on the right, not only in the US but all across the globe. It would merely be funny, if only it weren't so scary.