Thomas Homan, a Fox News contributor and former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director, is scheduled to speak at a conference this week that will feature QAnon conspiracy theorists Michael Flynn and Lin Wood, who both have a history of endorsing political violence. South Carolina State Treasurer Curtis Loftis (R) is also set to speak at the event.
The United Patriots Alliance will host Rock the Red 2021 on June 4 and 5 at Embassy Suites by Hilton in Greeneville, South Carolina. General admission tickets are $167 and adult VIP tickets are $347. The conference describes itself as “the premier event in SC that educates, motivates, and activates citizens and patriots from around the country to get involved in the affairs of their local, state, and national governments.”
One of the keynote speakers is Flynn, a disgraced former Trump national security adviser and QAnon supporter. He recently spoke at a QAnon-themed conference and endorsed a Myanmar-like military coup in the United States. (Following heavy criticism, Flynn backtracked on his comment.)
Other speakers at the South Carolina conference include:
The conference is led by Republican organizer Pressley Stutts. The Daily Beast reported in April that he has a history of pushing right-wing conspiracy theories:
On Facebook, Stutts has interspersed broadsides against local Republicans with repostings of QAnon-inflected fantasies of mass hangings of “deep state” traitors alongside inspirational memes and photos of dogs. “Judgement day,” read one meme he shared, “will not be rigged.”
Stutts also posted numerous photos of the Jan. 6 rally and subsequent riot, including selfies with Infowars host Alex Jones and rally organizer Ali Alexander. One early post from the day, with a photo of the mob clamoring up the inauguration stand on the Capitol’s West Front, had the cheer-leading message “Trump supporters breach the Capitol!”
However, Stutts later embraced the conspiracy theory that it was “antifa,” not Trump supporters, who were responsible for the violence—even comparing it to Kristallnacht, a night of coordinated violence carried out in Germany by Nazi paramilitary squads against Jews in 1938. Federal court proceedings have found, of course, that many of the people who broke into the Capitol and attacked police officers belonged to far-right militia groups, or at least were Trump supporters, not antifa.
Joining the QAnon conspiracy theorists will be Thomas Homan and Curtis Loftis.
Homan is a Fox News contributor who was previously the acting director of ICE under former President Donald Trump. He has used his Fox platform to repeatedly push anti-immigrant rhetoric.
Loftis is a Republican who was elected the state treasurer of South Carolina in 2010. In June 2020, he wrote a now-unavailable Facebook post stating that he’s “tired of being a second-class citizen to anyone screaming mindless chants that happen to align with the Leftists running our bureaucracies or our tax dollar supported universities that are turning our kids into Marxist revolutionaries." He added that he “won’t place a chip in my body, carry a health passport, detail my private life to a government contact tracer or be forced to take medicines or vaccinations” and “will not replace my Christian faith with your warmed over Marxism called Social Justice Theory.”
Flynn’s military coup endorsement came at a QAnon-themed conference in Texas which also featured Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX). Media Matters has repeatedly documented how Republican Party officials have embraced QAnon and attempted to appeal to its followers.
