The Dearborn "protests" were part of a carefully coordinated intelligence operation to incite civil war
Following months of potent anti-Islam Christian nationalist propaganda, this week's fake protest in Michigan was part Democrat-assistance, part destabilization op, and completely Flynntarded.
The Dearborn events on 11/18 were part of a highly coordinated psychological warfare campaign to incite hatred of both Muslims and Jews, led by the Michael Flynn influencer network, and part of Flynn’s longstanding campaign to incite a religious civil war.
On that day, a “unity” march in Dearborn, Michigan – organized by fringe Republican gubernatorial candidate Anthony Hudson – devolved into a tense standoff between a small group of Flynn-linked chaos agents and a much larger crowd of local Muslim residents.
The march had originally been billed by Hudson as an “American Crusade” to ban Sharia Law and “protect Christians,” but just days before the event he claimed to have a change of heart and recast it as a “unity rally” after visiting Dearborn’s mosques and realizing the city wasn’t under Sharia law. Despite Hudson’s late apology and rebranding, the Nov. 18 demonstration was steeped in Islamophobic propaganda and taken over by Flynn-tied former antifa rioter, Jake Lang.
Lang taunted Muslim onlookers by slapping a Quran with a slab of bacon while yelling “Christ is king of America!” He even attempted to burn a Quran in the street – until a counter-protester punched him and knocked the book away. Police intervened to separate the sides and prevent further violence as shouting matches escalated.
The event was more than a campaign gimmick. The convergence of well-known extremists and outside agitators - even including Antifa-linked journalists from Portland, OR - in Dearborn that day coincides with the striking resemblance of the march’s messaging to anti-Muslim Flynn network propaganda. Indeed, multiple activists with ties to Michael Flynn’s network showed up in Dearborn, and their provocations closely mirrored talking points promoted online by Flynn-allied influencers. This report examines evidence that Flynn’s sphere of influence orchestrated or at least amplified Hudson’s rally – using intermediaries linked to Hudson’s campaign – and it explores three possible objectives behind the stunt: (1) to drive Muslim voters away from Donald Trump and back toward Democrats; (2) to incite hatred and even violence between Christians and Muslims; and (3) to further radicalize Christian conservatives towards violence.
Months of Anti-Muslim Narratives Before the Protest
The Dearborn confrontation did not emerge in a vacuum – it was the crescendo of months of intensifying anti-Muslim propaganda aimed at portraying American Muslims as incompatible with our Constitution. Around August 2025, X accounts linked to Flynn began fixating on Dearborn (which has America’s largest Muslim-majority community and voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2024) as a supposed hotbed of “Muslim infiltration” and creeping Sharia law.
Anthony Hudson, a Michigan gubernatorial candidate with a past that includes a 2019 guilty plea for domestic violence charges, eagerly amplified these false claims. During an October Republican primary debate, he accused Dearborn of enforcing Sharia law and even vowed to deploy the National Guard to the city “to protect residents” if elected governor.
In the following weeks, Hudson’s social media posts continued to demonize Dearborn with allegations that the city was oppressing Christians under Islamic rule. This narrative – that U.S. Muslims were imposing Sharia in defiance of the Constitution – spread widely in right-wing forums and Facebook groups long before November 18. (For example, extremists repeatedly posted on the now indefinitely paused “Grassroots Army” Facebook group of a “Sharia law takeover… right here in Dearborn.”)
Local leaders continually stressed that these claims had no basis in reality: Dearborn has no Sharia-based ordinances and in fact has far more churches than mosques, plus plenty of bars and liquor stores like any other American city. Such facts did not stop the flood of propaganda from Michael Flynn himself, his son, Lara Logan, Wall Street Apes, the Hodge Twins, Jack Posobiec, and the hundreds or even thousands of smaller accounts and bots all linked to Flynn’s propaganda network.
Hudson leaned into this narrative to drum up support. He seized on an unrelated local news event – the FBI’s arrest of a few young men in an ISIS-inspired terror plot – and cynically spun it as evidence of Sharia law in Dearborn. “Do you think this is related to Sharia law in Dearborn?” Hudson asked in one post. “Yes, I think so,” he answered himself.
In reality, Dearborn’s government is entirely secular (as Hudson himself would later admit). But by mid-November 2025, a convergence of false stories had painted Dearborn as “un-American” and Muslims as incompatible with the U.S. Constitution. This drumbeat of disinformation primed the pump for what happened on November 18.
Flynn’s Network and Its Role in Shaping the Narrative
Michael Flynn’s network – a carefully curated and handled collection of influencers on social media and podcasts – was instrumental in propagating the anti-Muslim narrative and in orchestrating the Dearborn fake protest. Flynn himself has a long history of virulent anti-Islam rhetoric; he once described Islamism as a “vicious cancer” inside every Muslim that “has to be excised.”
Since 2021, Flynn has positioned himself at the forefront of a movement blending Christian nationalism with far-right conspiracy theories, touring the country with events like Clay Clark’s ReAwaken America roadshow. These rallies – held nationwide – peddle the idea that America is in a spiritual war, often casting Muslims, Jews, secularists, and other “outsiders” as existential threats to a Christian nation.
I’ve been arguing for some time that Flynn’s brand of Christian nationalism represents a false gospel incompatible with Biblical Christianity and I’m far from alone in that.
In short, Flynn’s nationwide network has been priming its followers to view Islam (and religious pluralism generally) as enemies of America. That created a receptive audience for the fabricated “Sharia takeover” narrative in Dearborn.
The Flynn network role in orchestrating the Dearborn chaos
Flynn’s network had direct links to the planning and promotion of Hudson’s Dearborn rally. One notable figure is Chadwick Twillman, an accelerationist Michigan activist running for state senate in the still vacant 35th district. Twillman is a nephew of former CIA Director Mike Pompeo. Twillman was convicted of stabbing someone in 2006 and spent a year in prison, got another conviction for drunk driving in 2008, then befriended Jacob Chansely, the “Qanon Shaman,” around 2018. Twillman became somewhat famous for driving Chansley from Arizona to Washington D.C. for the January 6, 2021 protests.
According to his own campaign website, he is very involved in the Flynn network. He quotes Flynn, includes two pictures of himself and Flynn, and posted a pictures of himself laying hands on and praying with one of the guys who allegedly entrapped Tina Peters - Mike Lindell.
Twillman publicly aligned himself with Hudson’s anti-Sharia campaign, appearing alongside Hudson and endorsing his long-shot gubernatorial bid on a “Michigan First” platform. Twillman shares Flynn’s America-first, anti-“globalist” ideology and his involvement suggests that key players in Michigan’s Flynn-linked circles were helping elevate Hudson’s message. It is likely no coincidence that Twillman helped connect this fringe candidate to a broader “patriot” network.
Another crucial intermediary was Jayden Scott, a self-described entrepreneur from Michigan who played dual roles in this saga. Scott employs Twillman at his “Mountain Movers Firm,” which he describes as part finance firm and part mergers and acquisitions of digital assets. Scott was Hudson’s campaign manager, and quit after Hudson broke with the Flynn narratives, stating publicly from a Dearborn mosque that “Sharia does not exist in Dearborn.”
Scott and Twillman then appeared alongside Jake Lang in Dearborn. In fact, on the day of the march, Scott co-hosted a four-hour livestream with Jan. 6 figure Jake Lang, who had arrived in Dearborn from Florida as an outside agitator. During the stream, Scott boasted about the operation’s funding – noting that Lang had come on a tour bus emblazoned with “Anthony Hudson for Governor” branding, a custom wrap that Scott claimed cost $250,000.
This detail is striking: Scott and Twillman drove Jake Lang and other provocateurs to and from the event in a bus that Scott owned and had paid to have wrapped with Hudson campaign graphics, even after he had quit working for Hudson’s campaign. At the event, Hudson declared repeatedly that the bus had nothing to do with him or his campaign, and by all accounts it appears he was truthful about that, even if he has a long record of being untruthful.
As a side note, it is good for Hudson that he was distancing himself from that bus, as it appears to lack the “paid for by” notice that is required by state law on all campaign advertising. The bus definitely belongs to Scott, as this post of the RV pre-wrap by Scott reveals. Note his own caption from October 15, 2024, before he joined Hudson: “The coffers are full, the men have been assembled. War is enviable(sic). #theamericancrusade”
After exiting the bus with most of Hudson’s campaign team who had all quit days prior, Jake Lang, with much theatrics and with a cross in one hand and a can of orange spray paint in the other, accused Hudson of being a “traitor” who “kneeled in a mosque” then spray painted “CUCK,” a slang term for a weak and submissive man, over Hudson’s name.
Jake Lang’s presence in Dearborn offers the clearest window into Flynn’s network at work. Lang – a 28-year-old from Florida – is a high-profile January 6 participant who was facing 11 federal charges related to the Capitol riot (including violent assault on police with a baseball bat) before Donald Trump included Lang in his blanket J6 pardons. After his pardon, Lang styled himself as a political figure and champion of the ultra-MAGA Christian nationalist right. In the video below, Flynn himself even sings happy birthday to Lang, set to video footage of Lang swinging a baseball bat at Capitol Police on J6.
One of Lang’s cellmates after J6, Tim Hale, spent considerable time one on one with Lang, and has been very forthcoming with his experience, sharing evidence that Lang is a federal informant, was an Antifa rioter before J6, and is a pathological liar. His material is well worth digging into, and this is a good place to start.
Last year, Lang performed a similar operation in an attempt to stoke racial riots after a black man stabbed Austin Metcalf, who was white, to death at a football game. Lang, with the help of the Flynn propaganda network, attempted to stoke white on black hatred over the event. In the following video, Lang tells the grieving father of Metcalf that he was exhibiting “white guilt” and “you’re creating more Austin Metcalfs with your weakness” by refusing to join Lang in creating a media spectacle.
On November 18 in Dearborn, Lang effectively hijacked Hudson’s event, marching under his own banner reading “Americans Against Islamification” and attempting to spark confrontations by desecrating a Quran. He held up a lighter to a Quran in an effort to set it on fire, until enraged counter-protesters shoved him and doused the flame. Lang then slapped the Quran with a slab of bacon, further inflaming the crowd, while yelling “Christ is king of America!”
He had come prepared for chaos – he wore a tactical vest strikingly similar to that worn by J6 alleged FBI informant Ray Epps – and he taunted the Muslim locals in hopes of provoking a brawl. At one point a man pretending to join Lang’s march suddenly punched Lang in the face, unable to tolerate the insults. Lang was caught on camera boasting afterward that he’d been hit harder by female police officers, as he shrugged off the punch. Police maintained a tight perimeter to prevent the conflict from erupting into wider violence.
The event was deliberately planned around a Dearborn City Council meeting, and at that meeting, Lang took the podium to proclaim that “islamification… is aiming for the destruction of white people… You guys don’t live like we do. We don’t want you in our country… respectfully, get the f-ck out of our country.” Then he pointed to each of the Muslims on the city council and said to each of them, “I don’t want you here.”
He then chanted “Jesus Christ is king” as police escorted him out. Jayden Scott screamed, red faced, into a media livestream camera, “Christ is kiiing!” Their use of this term is not in worship of Jesus Christ but as a dog whistle intended to rally a psychological response for manipulative purposes. You can watch his speech here, with some white supremacist color at the beginning.
The promotion by Twillman, the logistical support from Scott, and Lang’s mobilization of significant resources (the wrapped bus, professional livestream crews from Portland including crews friendly with Antifa, etc.) all point to a concerted effort to stage the Dearborn rally as a high-profile flashpoint. In other words, Flynn’s network appears to have used Hudson’s campaign as a vehicle – via trusted lieutenants like Twillman and Scott – to inject their narrative into a real-world confrontation.
Outcomes of the Dearborn Operation
I posit three main objectives of this broader campaign. The patterns suggest three main objectives behind this operation:
1. Reverse Muslim Voters’ Shift Toward Trump
One aim of this Flynn-linked stunt may have been to undermine Donald Trump’s recent gains among Muslim and Arab American voters. With the help of key Republican Muslim operatives, Trump reversed a longstanding trend of Michigan Muslims voting overwhelmingly Democrat. Driven by disillusionment with Democrats on issues like foreign policy and by shared conservative social values, polls showed Trump winning 75% of the Michigan Muslim vote and he won Dearborn with a significant margin.
Hudson’s two-week campaign of fear (before his about-face), with the aggressive support of the Flynn network, bombarded conservative media with talk of “Muslim infiltration,” which risks pushing Muslim Americans right back into the Democratic fold. In fact, the backlash to Hudson’s rhetoric was swift and bipartisan: other GOP leaders publicly disavowed his claims, and the Michigan chapter of CAIR condemned the planned march as an “Islamophobic publicity stunt”. Facing this outcry, Hudson walked into local mosques on the eve of the rally to apologize, admitting that “everything you’ve been told about Dearborn is a complete fabrication.”
Despite that, thanks to Lang and the ongoing propaganda from the Flynn network, the damage was done – the spectacle has reinforced Muslim Americans’ wariness of the GOP’s far-right wing. This aligns perfectly with Flynn’s broader operations in swing states across the country: “by any means necessary” cause Republicans to lose. In short, the Dearborn stunt helped drive a wedge between Muslim communities and the Republican Party, nudging Muslim voters back toward Democrats who stood with them against what is seen as overt Islamophobia.
2. Incite Hatred Between Christians and Muslims
The Dearborn march’s overtly sectarian framing suggests another goal: to inflame inter-religious animosity. Hudson explicitly cast his event in confrontationist religious terms – rallying “patriots and pastors” for a “crusade” against Islam in Michigan. The couple dozen protesters who showed up under his or Lang’s banners embodied this crusader mentality, some carrying crosses and shouting Christian slogans as they confronted their Muslim neighbors.
“Outsiders turned our city into a political spectacle and made our families feel unsafe in their own town,” lamented State Rep. Alabas Farhat, who represents Dearborn, at a city council meeting afterward.
That outcome was precisely what the instigators wanted: images and headlines of Americans divided along religious lines, shouting and scuffling in the streets. Such imagery feeds the extremist narrative that “Christians are under attack by Muslims on U.S. soil” – and likewise convinces some Muslims that Christians harbor hatred toward them. Flynn’s network thrives on this “clash of civilizations” trope. It helps their cause to portray the world in Manichaean, us-versus-them terms, because that worldview can recruit and radicalize more followers. In summary, the Dearborn operation was designed to stoke mutual hatred between Christians and Muslims, creating martyrs and villains for each side. This social fragmentation serves the interests of the very globalist communist agenda that Flynn pretends to oppose.
3. Radicalize Christian Conservatives for an Anti- Constitutional Revolt
Perhaps the most far-reaching objective was to escalate the radicalization of Christian conservatives – pushing them closer to embracing extra-legal “revolutionary” action that undermines core constitutional protections. The Flynn network’s endgame, by its own rhetoric, is to foment a militant Christian nationalist movement willing to defy the existing government and legal order.
At ReAwaken America rallies, Flynn and his cohorts often exhort attendees to see themselves as warriors in a divine mission, blurring the line between spiritual revival and armed rebellion. A common trope is “The time is coming for good people to do bad things to bad people.”
The Dearborn event furthered that agenda on multiple levels. First, it framed First Amendment religious freedom (Muslims’ right to peacefully and legally practice their religion) as an evil that must be “banished.” Hudson’s original promises that “Sharia law will be banned” and that he would even stop mosque calls to prayer were effectively vows to override the First Amendment protections for an unpopular minority faith.
Such rhetoric conditions Flynn network followers to reject America’s foundational freedoms, even as they are misled to believe they are defending them.
Secondly, by involving street activists with a penchant for violence like Jake Lang, the operation injected a paramilitary element into the mix. Lang is someone who literally tried to form a private militia in 2021 while still in jail after J6. At the Dearborn march, he surrounded himself with supporters (some in tactical gear) and spoke ominously about demographics – expressing “concern about a growing non-white American population.”
This is the language of racial and religious war. By showcasing Lang and his confrontational tactics, the event sent a signal to hardcore Christian nationalists that it’s time to take the fight from online forums to real-world showdowns. The hope for Flynn’s network would be to galvanize more mainstream conservatives into either joining the cause or at least sympathizing with its militant wing.
Throughout Flynn’s Christian nationalist circles are calls for armed rebellion, leading a growing number of Americans to believe they may have to “take up arms against the government.” This toxic brew greatly exacerbates polarization and primes people for violence.
In Dearborn, we saw that dynamic in action: armed or belligerent “patriots” invoking Christ while attempting to provoke a fight in the streets. Such spectacles help normalize the idea of using force in the name of Christianity and patriotism. The end result is a base of Christian conservatives who become more radical, more enraged, and more willing to trample on others’ rights (and even on core American principles like religious liberty) in pursuit of an apocalyptic political vision. In short, the Dearborn operation advanced Flynn’s goal of forging a revolutionary Christian-nationalist fervor: it provided a propaganda win for recruiters, a kind of training exercise in public confrontation, and a narrative of “righteous” violence that can be used to justify future actions.
Conclusion
The November 18 Dearborn protest did not arise organically from local grievances – it was fueled and exploited by a wider network of agitators who have been strategically spreading anti-Muslim (and antisemitic) narratives. The evidence indicates that Michael Flynn’s sphere of influence had a direct hand in this event, from the months-long disinformation buildup about Sharia law in America to the physical presence of Flynn-linked activists orchestrating the turmoil on the ground. Through figures like Chadwick Twillman and Jayden Scott, Flynn’s network connected a marginal gubernatorial campaign to national extremist circuits, turning a small-town demonstration into a nationally televised flashpoint. Their likely aims – to realign Muslim political loyalty, to inflame sectarian animosity, and to harden the resolve of would-be Christian “soldiers” – align closely with the Flynn network’s playbook of divide-and-radicalize.
Ultimately, the Dearborn community responded with resilience. The city’s residents, officials, and interfaith leaders largely rejected the provocation. To Hudson’s credit, he admitted his errs and described Dearborn as peaceful and hospitable, and free of Sharia.
And many Dearborn residents saw through the kayfabe, recognizing how fake and contrived Lang and his cohort’s actions were, like this guy (notice the belligerent Jayden Scott - more on him soon):
Indeed, this incident has awoken many to the dangers of Flynn and his psychological operations and mind control tactics. I pray more wake up to him - before it’s too late.
Yep the FlynnStones method of insurrection to try to hurt trump.
good reporting, thank you. i learned a lot. sheds so much light on what we witnessed on J6. hopefully more discerning people on the right and in the church wake up to this treachery.