The “Y’all Qaeda” militia is short on people, supplies and food

he armed standoff in remote southeast Oregon, where white militants led by the Bundy clan have taken over federal buildings at a wildlife refuge, isn’t going according to plan.

The would-be insurrectionists are undermanned, undersupplied and exhausted. They’ve been unable to provoke the confrontation with federal agents that they chest-thumpingly declared themselves willing to die in. And they’ve found themselves roundly mocked on social media as “Yee-hawdists” in the service of “Y’all Qaeda,” “Yokel Haram” or “Vanilla ISIS.”

Taking up arms against the federal government is no laughing matter, of course. And if the militants were black, brown or Muslim, they’d likely be dead by now. But for a group of heavily armed Christian white dudes play-acting at revolution, things could hardly be going worse  .source

On Monday night, in fact, one Bundy brother told Oregon Public Broadcasting the militiamen might be willing to move along now — if the community requests it: “This is their county – we can’t be here and force this on them,” Ryan Bundy said. “If they don’t want to retrieve their rights, and if the county people tell us to leave, we’ll leave.”

How did the Bundy plan for revolution go sideways? The troubled evolution of the plot can be traced via Ammon Bundy’s social media presence.

December 29

The grand scheme to take a “hard stand” against federal “tyranny” took shape in the days after Christmas. In a video posted December 29, Ammon Bundy, son of the infamous deadbeat rancher Cliven, decried the “tremendous abuses” faced by a pair of Oregon cattlemen convicted of arson by the federal government. “We have to say that either we’re OK with these gross, blatant violations of the constitution… or we make a stand,” Bundy declared.

That’s when Bundy, fighting tears, issued a call to action to his family’s militant, anti-government supporters: “I’m asking you — and you know who you are: You that came, and you that felt to come, to the Bundy Ranch — I’m asking you to come to Burns [Oregon] on January 2, to make a stand.”

December 31

Almost from the beginning, there were warning signs that this plot wasn’t gelling, because of internal strife in the “patriot” community. In his next video, posted on New Year’s Eve, a nervous looking Ammon Bundy calls out to militia members across the country. He pleads with them to flout the orders of militia leaders who, he reveals, had been calling for a “stand down” — instead of a standoff — in Oregon.

Looking into the camera lens, Bundy says: “I am wanting to talk to the individual, to the patriot. This is not the time to stand down,” he says, “It’s time to stand up. And come to Harney County. We need your help. And we’re asking for it. No matter what your leader says… you need to get to Burns on the 2nd.”

January 2  

Bundy did find followers, including men like John Ritzheimer, the Arizona man who organized the gun-toting protest of the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix last October. Ritzheimer ventured to Oregon and declared himself, in a goodbye video to his family, “100 percent willing to lay my life down to fight against tyranny in this country.”

Seizing an unoccupied federal complex wasn’t the tricky part. Following a demonstration on the streets of Burns on Saturday, January 2, the Bundy militiamen drove 30 miles south to execute their takeover of the compound at the federal Malheur National Wildlife Refuge — which was closed for the weekend, and to which somehow they had obtained a full set of keys.source