Four radicals. Five bombs. Midnight on New Year’s Eve.
The FBI thwarted “Operation Midnight Sun” days before it was supposed to happen — a coordinated attack on logistics companies in Southern California by a group calling itself the Turtle Island Liberation Front.
If that name sounds ridiculous, don’t laugh. Counterterrorism expert Ryan Mauro says it’s a code word that should terrify you.
“Turtle Island” Means America Must Die
“Turtle Island” isn’t random. It’s deliberate.
The term comes from Native American creation mythology — the belief that North America was formed on the back of a turtle. Extremist groups have adopted it as code for the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
“It’s a way of calling for violence and the destruction of the U.S.,” Mauro told Glenn Beck.
Every anti-American terror movement uses this language: Islamists, anarchists, communists, indigenous radicals. They’ve unified around the concept of “liberating Turtle Island” from the evil white settler capitalists who supposedly ruined everything.
Different ideologies. Different endgames. One shared goal: destroy America first.
The Unholy Alliance
Glenn Beck identified the terrifying logic behind this coalition.
“This alliance with the indigenous people, with the Islamists, with Marxists — they’re all going to sort [the endgame] out later. They just want to kill us first. They want to overthrow the government first. Then they’ll start eating each other.”
He’s right. These groups have nothing in common except hatred for the United States. Islamists want a caliphate. Marxists want a communist revolution. Indigenous radicals want… something involving land and sovereignty.
None of these visions are compatible. But that doesn’t matter right now. The enemy of their enemy is their friend — at least until America falls.
Then the knives come out for each other.
The Pivot From Palestine
Mauro explained why this plot happened now.
The anti-Israel movement is floundering. After initial success in generating campus protests and corporate pressure, the “Free Palestine” campaign has stalled. Public sympathy has waned. The movement needs fresh energy.
So they’re pivoting to anti-police activism — specifically targeting ICE.
The Capital Research Center predicted these groups would target “companies that they can connect — even by some leap — to the Zionist infrastructure.” That way they hit all their themes simultaneously: anti-police, anti-Zionist, anti-capitalist, Turtle Island liberation, and pro-Palestine.
Operation Midnight Sun was exactly that. Logistics companies connected to supply chains connected to… something vaguely Israel-adjacent. Close enough for propaganda purposes.
BLM 2.0
Beck asked the obvious question: “How likely is this to become the next BLM movement?”
Mauro’s answer was chilling: “It’s extremely likely.”
Remember how BLM worked. They took America’s history of slavery — a real injustice that reasonable people acknowledge — and weaponized it to manipulate well-meaning citizens into posting black squares, donating millions, and joining protests that sometimes turned violent.
The Turtle Island movement will use the same playbook with Native American history.
The Trail of Tears. Wounded Knee. Broken treaties. Real historical injustices that Americans feel guilty about.
That guilt will be weaponized to recruit supporters, raise money, and provide cover for extremism. Just like BLM, the movement will have a sympathetic public face and a violent underground component.
By the time normal people realize they’ve been conned, the damage will be done.
“A Marker in Time”
Mauro emphasized that Operation Midnight Sun isn’t the end of something — it’s the beginning.
“Although this plot was foiled, make no mistake about it — it is a marker in time for this new era, this new offensive that has begun.”
The FBI stopped this one. They won’t stop all of them. The movement is organizing. The ideology is spreading. The infrastructure is being built.
This isn’t paranoia. This is pattern recognition. We watched BLM grow from fringe activism to burning cities in a few years. The same playbook is being deployed again with different branding.
The Coalition of Chaos
Mauro described the scope of the threat: “terrorists,” “overseas governments,” “Turtle Island folks,” and even “Christian anarchists” — “all one seditionist movement.”
That’s a lot of different factions. Different motivations. Different methods. But they’re coordinating. Sharing resources. Learning from each other’s successes and failures.
When an Islamist cell needs explosives expertise, they can find it in the anarchist community. When indigenous radicals need legal support, Marxist lawyers step up. When anyone needs money, dark networks of NGOs and overseas actors provide funding.
It’s not a single organization. It’s an ecosystem.
What Needs to Happen
Mauro outlined two immediate priorities.
First: “Put together a team to map out the Turtle Island intifada… so action can be taken.”
Law enforcement needs to understand the network — who’s connected to whom, where the money flows, how they communicate, what their targets are. You can’t fight what you can’t see.
Second: “[Preserve] history… because the counter-narrative is going to require us to use historical documents to tell the truth of everything that went on with the Native American tribes — the good, the bad, and the ugly.”
The movement will weaponize a one-sided version of history. The defense requires the full story — including the parts that don’t fit the “noble savage oppressed by evil settlers” narrative.
That means documenting intertribal warfare, slavery practiced by some tribes, and the complex reality that doesn’t fit bumper-sticker slogans.
The ICE Target
Watch what happens with immigration enforcement over the next year.
The anti-ICE movement has been building since Trump’s first term. Every deportation raid generates protest. Every detention facility becomes a cause célèbre. Every enforcement action is called “fascism.”
The Turtle Island movement will merge anti-ICE activism with indigenous sovereignty claims and anti-capitalist rhetoric. They’ll argue that immigration enforcement is part of the “settler colonial” project — that ICE agents are the modern equivalent of cavalry soldiers pushing natives off their land.
It’s intellectually absurd but emotionally powerful. And emotional power is all that matters for recruitment.
The Bottom Line
The FBI stopped Operation Midnight Sun. Four would-be bombers are in custody. Five explosions didn’t happen.
But the movement that spawned them is growing. The ideology is spreading. The coalition is strengthening.
BLM burned cities and generated billions in corporate donations before people realized they’d been manipulated. The Turtle Island movement is following the same playbook with different grievances.
“Extremely likely” to become the next BLM, according to counterterrorism experts.
That’s not a warning for someday. That’s a warning for now.
The offensive has begun.