Georgia Governor Appoints Hate Group Leader to Immigration Board

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal today appointed a longtime leader in an anti-immigrant hate group to serve on a new state panel charged with enforcing the state’s harsh new immigration law.
Phil Kent was among those named by Deal to a new Immigration Enforcement Review Board. Created as part of Georgia’s punishing new anti-immigrant law — the Illegal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Act of 2011 — the panel will “review and investigate complaints related to illegal immigration and it will hold the authority to sanction those found to have violated Georgia’s immigration law.” (The Southern Poverty Law Center is part of a coalition of civil rights groups challenging the law in federal court.)
Phil Kent is a longtime national spokesman for Americans for Immigration Control (AIC) , a relationship mentioned in the Kent bio provided by the governor’s office. According to ProEnglish, another group Kent is involved in, he also serves as executive director of the American Immigration Control Foundation (AICF), a partner organization to AIC.
The SPLC has listed AIC and AICF, together, as a hate group for more than a decade. As the SPLC has previously reported, AICF has produced mounds of anti-immigrant propaganda over its more than two decades of existence. Particularly notable is the video “Immigration: Making America Less Beautiful?,” which is filled with a cornucopia of racist images. The video depicts a “raging flood” of Latinos, Haitians and other immigrants  — “the greatest wave of immigration the world has ever witnessed” — threatening America’s “generally European” core with “foreign domination.” In the video, Miami is a “Third World nightmare” where “illegal aliens” practice “voodoo” and leave stinking “human waste” in the streets. “America is beautiful,” says the narrator. “Why spoil it?”
Kent’s close colleague at AIC is John Vinson, who has held leadership positions in both AIC and AICF since signing on with the groups in 1990. Vinson wrote the AICF-published Immigration and Nation: A Biblical View, in which he claims that it is against God’s will to weaken the “divinely unique” character of every nation. In the case of America, Vinson makes clear in the booklet that character belongs to English-speaking, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. He says that assimilating “the races of the world” is “an impossible task” and argues that current immigration patterns may “destroy our nationhood.” Vinson also attacks the “spiritual Balkanization” he claims is promoted by non-Christian immigration.
Vinson is also a founding member of the neo-Confederate hate group League of the South , one of whose leaders has argued that slavery is “God-ordained.” Another made the statement, “Somebody needs to say a good word for slavery. Where in the world are the Negroes better off today than in America?”
Kent has additional connections to extremists. His articles have run in publications of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), a white supremacist hate group that believes “mixing the races is rebelliousness against God” and that has described black people as a “retrograde species of humanity.” An article penned by Kent that ran in the CCC’s newsletter in 1999 described the CCC as a good conservative group that had been “targeted for demonization by the political leadership of the Left and its media allies.” Kent described his participation at one of the group’s national meetings where there was a discussion by “some speakers urging preparation for a future North American balkanization whereby some majority-white country in middle America might be established.” Sam Francis, then the CCC’s newsletter editor, called at the meeting for the repeal of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, according to Kent. In other issues of the CCC’s publication, Kent’s books are advertised for sale.
Kent also serves on the board of ProEnglish, a group that pushes for government documents, such as driver’s license tests, to be printed only in English. ProEnglish is the creation of John Tanton , the racist architect of the modern anti-immigrant movement. Tanton has made his white nationalist views clear, writing that he believes that “for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.” In a memo Tanton prepared for the leadership of the Washington anti-immigrant lobbying group Federation for American Immigration Reform , Tanton questioned the “educability” of Latinos and warned of a coming “Latin onslaught.” Tanton serves on ProEnglish’s board with Kent, and Tanton’s foundation, U.S. Inc., funds the organization.

Summary: Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal today appointed a longtime leader in an anti-immigrant hate group to serve on a new state panel charged with enforcing the state’s harsh new immigration law. Phil Kent was among those named by Deal to a new Immigration Enforcement Review Board. Created as part of Georgia’s punishing new anti-immigrant law — the Illegal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Act of 2011 — the panel will “review and investigate complaints related to illegal immigration and it will hold the…


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 11/17/2016
November 17, 2016
Hatewatch Staff
Twitter suspends alt-right accounts; Will Trump roll back the hate?; Bannon’s white-nationalist worldview explained; and more.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 6/23/2017
June 23, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
Domestic-terror data reveals the right-wing threat; KKK more ‘fractured’ but dangerous; Court lifts injunction blocking MS anti-LGBT law; and more.


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Hatewatch
Day 16: In opening statements, U.S. attorney seeks to dispel notion that Bundys were "protesting"
November 14, 2017
Ryan Lenz and Bill Morlin


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Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 5/16/2017
May 16, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
A look at the startling rise of sovereign citizens; Alt-righters get scoops from Trump operatives; Idaho town refutes Jones’ claims about refugees; and more.


Neo-Nazi Webmaster May Testify in Trial of Alleged Spokane Bomber

Alex Linder , who operates a leading Internet hate forum called Vanguard News Network, is expected to be subpoenaed by the Justice Department as a prosecution witness in the trial of a man accused of planting a potentially deadly bomb on the route of a Martin Luther King Jr. “unity parade” in Spokane, Wash.
Alex Linder
Linder may be subpoenaed to answer questions about email exchanges and 1,139 postings made on the VNN forum by Kevin William Harpham (right), who used the moniker “Joe Snuffy” on the Web site while posting racist comments and seeking bomb-building advice, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Rice said at a pretrial hearing Thursday.
Linder and Harpham both have past ties to the National Alliance , once regarded as the most-dangerous neo-Nazi organization in the United States.
The FBI has recovered digital pictures Harpham took at the January unity parade, including photos of him and close-ups of African American children and a Jewish man wearing a yarmulke who marched in the parade, it was revealed at the hearing. Those individuals, likely identified during the massive FBI terrorism investigation, also could be called as witnesses as part of an expected prosecution effort to put faces on Harpham’s intended hate crime victims.
Hundreds of parade marchers were re-routed after the bomb – made with fishing weights and shrapnel dipped in rat poison – was discovered on the route and successfully disarmed, leaving behind a pile of forensic evidence.
FBI forensic agents later recovered the deleted still and video images on a Panasonic camera they seized during a search of Harpham home near Addy in northeastern Washington following his arrest on March 7, Rice told Senior U.S. District Court Judge Justin Quackenbush.
Agents also seized copies of The Anarchist Cookbook ; The Turner Diaries , a race war novel written by National Alliance founder William Pierce ; American Terrorist , the biography of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh; a police bomb technician’s handbook entitled “Pipe and Fire Bomb Designs,’’ and another bomb building book called Improvised Munitions Black Book Vol. III , the prosecutor told the judge.  The judge ruled that the jury can be told about all the books, except the McVeigh biography.
Following Harpham’s arrest, FBI agents later recovered a second improvised explosive device, powered by potassium nitrate, they believe he made and abandoned in a gravel pit near his home, before building the parade bomb containing black powder, Rice told the court.
The FBI now has DNA evidence linking Harpham to at least one of the bombs.
The details are the first to surface in the 6-month-old investigation marked by sealed court filings and secret, closed-courtroom proceedings.  At least one-fifth of the court documents filed in the case, including the initial criminal complaint used to justify Harpham’s arrest, remain under seal and are not accessible to the public.
Even a portion of Thursday’s federal court hearing was closed to the public while the judge heard testimony from two FBI agents who reportedly obtained statements from Harpham before he formally received his Miranda warnings on the day of his arrest.
It wasn’t immediately known if the judge would allow a jury to hear about Harpham’s post-arrest statements at his trial now set for Aug. 22. At the outset of Thursday’s hearing, Assistant Federal Defender Kimberly Deater asked the judge to close the entire proceeding intended for court rulings on what evidence would be excluded from the trial, but Quackenbush said there was no reason to exclude the media and spectators.
To help convince a jury of Harpham’s state of mind and intent when he allegedly built and planted the bomb, prosecutors said they intend to introduce at trial several of the defendant’s personal postings on the VNN web site, Rice told the court.  The prosecutor didn’t elaborate in court, but the VNN site administrator would be subpoenaed presumably to verify the authenticity of those postings and emails he exchanged with Harpham.
Those VNN postings are intended to prove Harpham really is the individual behind the “Joe Snuffy” postings, that many are virulently racist, including frequent use of the “n-word,” and a third category where he seeks help with bomb making, Rice said.
Going through a lengthy list of those blog postings, which remained sealed from public view, the judge said he would grant a defense request to suppress from introduction at trial any of Harpham’s anti-Jewish, or anti-Semitic arguments. The judge said he would suppress Harpham’s anti-Semitic remarks posted on the VNN site “because they are more religious than racial views.”
“Any racial animus, any anti-Semitic views (expressed by Harpham) would be much more prejudicial than relevant” during the trial, the judge said, explaining his rulings were intended to ensure a fair trial.
When the judge said there was no evidence that the bomb was placed for any reason other than racial prejudice and was intended for African Americans on the MLK holiday, the prosecutor said Harpham clearly had racist views aimed at others besides black people. The prosecutor, at that point, told the court the FBI had recovered pictures Harpham had taken of a couple of young black children at the parade and a “Jewish gentleman” wearing a yarmulke.
When the judge said it was opinion that the Martin Luther King Day parade – the intended target – largely was about African Americans, the prosecutor responded by telling the court that Harpham also expressed anti-Semitic and antigovernment views, and publicly posted those comments on the VNN site.
The judge said he would allow use of  “Joe Snuffy” postings, ranting about gays and abortion and another referring to ZOG – the Zionist Occupied Government -- but ordered deletion of others making reference to Christians and Jews, and Doc Marten’s red boot laces (a symbolic favorite of neo-Nazi skinheads), Jewish bankers and the role of a “lone wolf.”
At one point on the VNN forum, Harpham asked for guidance in bomb-building, expressing his personal disappointment that The Turner Diaries , which he had just purchased and read, didn’t offer and ready-made formulas to construct such destructive devices, Rice said.
Statements from prosecutors at Thursday’s day-long hearing painted a picture of a “lone wolf” racist, who belonged to the National Alliance and once flirted with the idea of joining the Aryan Nations .
The 36-year-old unemployed former soldier and electrician is charged with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, possession of an unregistered destructive device and use of a firearm in relation to a crime of violence. He also is only the third person to be charged by the Justice Department with a federal hate crime for allegedly violating provisions of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hates Crimes Prevention Act signed into law in October 2009.

Summary: Alex Linder , who operates a leading Internet hate forum called Vanguard News Network, is expected to be subpoenaed by the Justice Department as a prosecution witness in the trial of a man accused of planting a potentially deadly bomb on the route of a Martin Luther King Jr. “unity parade” in Spokane, Wash. Alex Linder Linder may be subpoenaed to answer questions about email exchanges and 1,139 postings made on the VNN forum by Kevin William Harpham (right), who used the moniker “Joe Snuffy”…


News Roundup for July 22, 2011

Four suspects in Arroyo Grande, Calif., are in custody for burning a cross outside the home of an African-American woman. The group, led by Jason Kahn, 36, and three others stole a cross from a local Lutheran church and burned it in front of the house of a random black family.  The group, allegedly meth users and possible white supremacists, are claiming they burned the cross as a memorial to Kahn’s father, a meth addict shot by police in 1994.
The former leader of the reportedly white supremacist Invaders Motorcycle Club has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for conspiracy to manufacture narcotics. Timothy “Beefy” Bartruff was found guilty last year for conspiring with another man in a meth production operation that spanned several states.
A California man on trial for assaulting a gay man has been convicted of felony assault and committing a hate crime. Nicholas Klopp, who reportedly subscribed to white supremacist views, was accused of making derogatory sexually-oriented comments towards a man and then attacking him at a birthday party where some attendees were gay.
The anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church has announced that it will protest marriage equality in New York on Sunday. The group says it will picket several areas in New York City including marriage bureaus and Governor Andrew Cuomo’s local office.
An Oregon white supremacist was arrested for selling hashish to an undercover investigator. Michael Conway, 30, attempted to sell two pounds of hashish worth around $18,000 to the investigator.

Summary: Four suspects in Arroyo Grande, Calif., are in custody for burning a cross outside the home of an African-American woman. The group, led by Jason Kahn, 36, and three others stole a cross from a local Lutheran church and burned it in front of the house of a random black family.  The group, allegedly meth users and possible white supremacists, are claiming they burned the cross as a memorial to Kahn’s father, a meth addict shot by police in 1994. The former leader of the reportedly white…


Hatewatch

This post is part of a continuing Hatewatch series examining the popular Newslinks & Articles section of Stormfront.org . Until last summer, Stormfront was the most trafficked white supremacist site online.


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Hatewatch
White Supremacist William Fears to Get Five Years in Prison
October 11, 2019
Hatewatch Staff
William Henry Fears IV, an avowed racist with a lengthy criminal record, has agreed to a plea deal of five years for choking his former girlfriend.


Hatewatch


Hatewatch

President Trump’s Deputy Communications Director Julia Hahn had connections to the white nationalist movement around the time she joined the White House as an aide, based upon hundreds of private correspondences that were leaked to Hatewatch by a former colleague and friend.


Hatewatch

After just over 20 years as the premier online gathering place for white Supremacists, Stormfront.org lost its crown to the unruly, meme-fueled neo-Nazi propaganda shop, the Daily Stormer, in July of 2016.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
White Nationalist State Department Official Surfaces in Photographs
August 09, 2019
Michael Edison Hayden
Hatewatch has obtained images of Matthew Q. Gebert, a State Department official who is involved in the white nationalist movement.


Hatewatch

Amidst sustained civil unrest at protests over the killing of George Floyd, President Donald Trump tweeted Sunday , “The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization.”


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Gab Waited Days to Remove a User Arrested for Inciting Violence
June 19, 2019
Michael Edison Hayden
A man who authorities say wanted to start a race war stayed on the social network Gab for days after he was arrested for allegedly inciting violence on it, according to a Hatewatch review.


Hatewatch

One American News Network (OANN) correspondent Jack Posobiec reached one million Twitter followers over Labor Day weekend. He has repeatedly used the website to promote hate and disinformation and is currently promoting unsubstantiated and potentially inflammatory claims suggesting that Democrats are plotting to steal the 2020 election from President Trump.


White Nationalists React to Norway Rampage

As most of the world reeled in reaction to the tragic shooting of scores of Norwegians by right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik, anti-Semitic professor Kevin MacDonald , editor of the white nationalist website Occidental Observer, prepared his analysis of the pros and cons of Breivik’s deadly spree.
In a long piece posted Sunday night, MacDonald described Breivik as a “serious political thinker with a great many insights and some good practical ideas on strategy,” who “sees Christianity (correctly) as a historically powerful force for the preservation of Europe rather than mainly about religious faith.”
MacDonald, who is best known for his theory that Jews are genetically driven to destroy Western societies, is obviously perplexed by Breivik’s professed support for Israel. He speculated that it could be a “tactical” move in the face what Breivik saw as the more immediate threat of Islam. “In my experience, racially conscious Scandinavians are quite aware of Jewish media control,” he wrote. “In any case, he is certainly right in characterizing multiculturalism as an ideology of hate.”
In the short term, MacDonald predicted, “revulsion” over the killing of children would add fuel to multiculturalists’ fire and prove a setback to the white nationalist cause. But, he continued, Breivik’s rampage was not without its silver lining: “[I]t is possible that in the long run European elites will understand that the glorious multicultural future will not be attained without a great deal of bloodletting (including themselves and, as in this case, their children) and realize they will have to change their ways.”
White nationalists on other websites fretted about the public perception of their movement.
With its tall, blue-eyed blonds and active anti-immigrant and neo-Nazi groups, Norway (along with the rest of Scandinavia) is something of a fetish among white nationalists in America. As it became clear that Breivik espoused beliefs that overlap with their own, their primary concern seemed to be what one commenter on the popular website American Renaissance called a “public relations disaster.”
“No matter who was responsible, it shows the public relations disaster of such ‘lone-wolf’ vanguardist-type attacks,” wrote “Dutchman” on Friday night. “Who could sympathize with someone mowing down teenagers at a camp? Even if they are potential Marxists. I hope it is revealed that this guy was either a deranged leftist, or someone with a non-political grudge, or a convert to Islam, or a false-flag attack.”
“I’m devastated by this case,” commenter “Frak” wrote Sunday. “This evil monster has destroyed everything that I believed in. Gone forever is the moral high-ground we once had. How in the world can I possibly call any other race violent, and bad for Europe, and America, after this psycho did what he did. With one event, he has destroyed all that has been so delicately, and incrementally endeavored for. People with our beliefs will forever be associated with this event. This bastard has tolled our global death knell.”
At the other end of white nationalism’s spectrum lies Holocaust denier David Duke , whose anti-Semitic vitriol is far harsher than anything MacDonald’s pseudo-intellectual approach will permit. While American Renaissance commenters despaired for their cause and MacDonald indulged in contemplating both the good and the bad in Breivik, Charles Coughlin, who blogs on Duke’s website, could only deplore Breivik as a “pro-Zionist neocon” whose actions are an unredeemable distraction from “the real problem facing White people” – i.e., “Jewish control of the news media and the governments of White nations.”
“The Jews are promoting policies to flood every White nation with Third World people,” Coughlin wrote. “We need to expose this sinister situation. Lunatics going off on shooting sprees, whatever their intentions, only pave the way for more gun control and hate crime laws.”

Summary: As most of the world reeled in reaction to the tragic shooting of scores of Norwegians by right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik, anti-Semitic professor Kevin MacDonald , editor of the white nationalist website Occidental Observer, prepared his analysis of the pros and cons of Breivik’s deadly spree. In a long piece posted Sunday night, MacDonald described Breivik as a “serious political thinker with a great many insights and some good practical ideas on strategy,” who “sees Christianity…


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 8/21/2017
August 21, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
Thousands march peacefully against alt-right; Monuments are white supremacy tributes; Tech companies still monetize hate groups; and more.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 11/16/2016
November 16, 2016
Hatewatch Staff
What Bannon in the White House means; We really know little about hate crimes; Church keeps its ‘Heil Trump’ graffiti; and more.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 11/17/2016
November 17, 2016
Hatewatch Staff
Twitter suspends alt-right accounts; Will Trump roll back the hate?; Bannon’s white-nationalist worldview explained; and more.


Neo-Nazi Pleads in MLK Bomb, Sentencing Set for Nov. 30

Bomb component receipts, deleted pictures and a DNA match led FBI agents to identify long-time racist Kevin William Harpham as the man who built and planted a potentially deadly homemade explosive device on a Martin Luther King Jr. parade route in Spokane, Wash., earlier this year.
Those details came Wednesday at a 45-minute hearing in U.S. District Court in Spokane, where the 37-year-old Harpham — a man with past ties to the neo-Nazi National Alliance and the racist Vanguard News Network — pleaded guilty to attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and placing that bomb to carry out a hate crime.
Harpham, an unemployed electrician and former U.S. Army ordnance technician, struck the plea deal five days before his scheduled jury trial.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director William Mueller both have been briefed on the domestic terrorism case, Michael Ormsby, the U.S. attorney for Eastern Washington, confirmed after the hearing.
“This was a very significant case,” Ormsby said as he responded to reporters’ questions outside the federal courthouse. “This community was terrorized back on Jan. 17 when this event occurred.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Harrington, the lead prosecutor who outlined the Justice Department’s case, said it was an act of domestic terrorism carried out by a racist. “Mr. Harpham has told others he is a white supremacist and a white separatist,” Harrington told the court.
As part of a 16-page plea agreement, Harpham faces a sentencing range of 27 to 32 years if Senior U.S. District Judge Justin Quackenbush accepts the deal after a background report is prepared. If the judge rejects the agreement or proposes a sentence outside the sentencing range, either the defendant or federal prosecutors could back out.
The judge, who routinely accepts such plea agreements to avoid the costs of protracted trials, set sentencing for Nov. 30.
If Harpham, of Addy, Wash., had gone to trial and been convicted of the four counts in a superseding indictment, he could have faced the likelihood of serving life in prison.
The judge spent 40 minutes painstakingly going over the written plea agreement with Harpham, who wore a gray Spokane County Jail jumpsuit and appeared with a shadow beard.
“Did you construct this device yourself?” the judge asked Harpham, considered a “lone wolf” by federal terrorism investigators who unraveled the case.
“Yes,” Harpham responded in a firm voice without elaborating.
“How long did you [take] to construct this device?” the judge then asked.
“It was a period of time; a month,” Harpham responded.
The judge then asked Harpham if he placed the device on the proposed route of the Jan. 17 MLK parade in downtown Spokane because of his actual or perceived racial bias toward the 2,000 participants in the unity march and rally.
“Yes,” Harpham said, confessing to violating provisions of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009. He is only the third person to be charged by the Justice Department with a federal hate crime under that law.
Federal Defender Roger Peven, one of three defense attorneys, told the court Harpham’s guilty pleas were given knowingly and voluntarily.
A brief outline of the evidence against Harpham – kept from the public in dozens of sealed court documents – was presented to the court by Assistant U.S. Attorney Harrington.
The prosecutor said Harpham, using the alias “Joe Snuffy,” had posted racist comments on the Vanguard News Network web site and made no secret of his views toward Jews and minorities — views that he eventually acted upon.
The improvised explosive device, which meets the legal federal definition of a “weapon of mass destruction,” was made out of 6-inch long steel pipe with a 3-inch bore hole, the federal prosecutor said.  The steel pipe was welded to a steel base plate, similar to a mortar tube.
A model rocket igniter, hooked to two 6-volt lantern batteries, was packed with 100 grams of black powder inside the steel pipe, surrounded by128 fishing weights dipped in brodifacoum, an anticoagulant and an active ingredient in rat poisons, Harrington said.
The triggering system consisted of an Audiovox remote car starter/alarm receiver that FBI agents confirmed Harpham purchased over the Internet, the prosecutor said. The remote system's key fob activator was not found in Harpham's possession when he was arrested March 9 as he drove away from his home in northeastern Washington.
A loaded handgun was found on the seat of the car and a rifle was in the trunk.When the device was found, the parade was rerouted and Harpham, who was videotaped in the crowd, presumably abandoned plans to remotely detonate his bomb.
But the bomb, once it was defused, became a windfall of physical evidence for FBI technicians, Harrington told the court. Three types of DNA – predominately that matched to Harpham – were found on the handle of the backpack which hid the bomb.
“The FBI investigation revealed several items of evidence leading to establishing Kevin William Harpham as the suspect responsible for the building and placement of the IED,” the plea agreement says.
Once the FBI crime lab identified the type of quarter-ounce fishing weights used in the device, agents contacted a Wal-Mart store in Colville, near the suspect’s home, and learned from computer records the store “had an unusually high amount of the weights sold during a one week period in November 2010.”
Wal-Mart records showed cash purchases of the fishing weights on Nov. 1 and 3. An examination of Harpham’s bank records show he purchased three more packs of the weights, along with Kraft Jet-Puffed Marshmallow Crème and Vitamin D milk on Nov. 7.
FBI agents also retrieved records showing Harpham bought a Panasonic Lumix digital camera on Nov. 15, the prosecutor said.  Once seized, the camera’s memory card contained “several dozen deleted’’ photos taken during the MLK parade, including pictures of Harpham and others of his intended victims, Harrington said.
U.S. Attorney Ormsby said it was solid investigative work by the Inland Northwest Joint Terrorism Task Force and other police agencies that solved the case. “Mr. Harpham acted alone, and there is no indication whatsoever there was a conspiracy,” the Justice Department official said.
“There was no ‘aha’ moment,” Ormsby said when asked how the case unraveled. “It was a giant jigsaw puzzle, put together by the FBI and other police agencies.”
“We wouldn’t have brought the plea agreement if we didn’t think this was fair,’’ Ormsby told reporters. “We think this is a fair sentencing range,” he said of the 27 to 32 years Harpham likely faces in prison.
Ormsby said the bomb had a “very significant load,” but he declined to speculate how many victims may have been killed or injured if it had been detonated. He said he had no doubts the device could have exploded, but didn’t want to discuss videotape and photos of FBI bomb technicians exploding three facsimile bombs in August.

Summary: Bomb component receipts, deleted pictures and a DNA match led FBI agents to identify long-time racist Kevin William Harpham as the man who built and planted a potentially deadly homemade explosive device on a Martin Luther King Jr. parade route in Spokane, Wash., earlier this year. Those details came Wednesday at a 45-minute hearing in U.S. District Court in Spokane, where the 37-year-old Harpham — a man with past ties to the neo-Nazi National Alliance and the racist Vanguard News Network —…


Presidential Candidates Invited to Sign Islamophobic ‘Pledge’

In a presidential election season already featuring a raft of insidious candidate “pledges” pushed by right-wing interest groups hoping to swap endorsements for commitments to their pet biases, it was only a matter of time before what might be termed the “Islamophobia/New World Order pledge” surfaced.
And so it has. It’s being put forth by the Center for Security Policy (CSP), whose founder and president is anti-Muslim propagandist Frank Gaffney (see also here ). The 12 points of the latest version of the “Peace Through Strength” pledge sound innocuous on the surface – but a peek beneath the surface reveals a cornucopia of right-wing fears.
This pledge updates a 10-point plan CSP introduced a year ago that was endorsed by a handful of congressional and state candidates. Now, Gaffney has invited all the current presidential candidates to sign this revised oath – but woe to the clueless candidate who does so without first reading the fine print.
Here are its 12 points by title:
1. Maintain a robust defense posture. 2. Invest in our national security. 3. Preserve American sovereignty. 4. Insist that arms control accords enhance America’s security. 5. Preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States. 6. Assure America’s energy security. 7. Secure America’s borders. 8. Protect America from unlawful enemy combatants. 9. Protect the military culture essential to the all-volunteer force. 10. Pursue a foreign policy that supports our allies and opposes our adversaries. 11. Enlist judicial and educational institutions in defending America. 12. Use force only where appropriate and, where that is the case, commit to victory.
Who could be against such modest-sounding concepts? But you might want to take a closer look at the detail provided at the pledge’s website.
Point No. 3, for example, could be subtitled the “Fear of the One World Government Conspiracy” platform. It reads, “Admirers of foreign judicial rulings, international treaties and other ‘transnationalist’ initiatives seek to alter or even supplant the U.S. Constitution and the representative, accountable form of government it guarantees.  We must, in particular, thwart efforts like the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) that would be a building block for world government by turning over control of the world’s oceans to the United Nations.” (This is not true; the Law of the Sea Convention was a multinational treaty that went into effect in 1994 that establishes uniform zones of coastal oceanic jurisdiction. The U.N. hosted the treaty negotiations but does not “control” the oceans in any fashion.)
No. 5 is the inevitable anti-Shariah platform. It drips with hype for the entirely phony threat of Shariah law toppling the U.S. Constitution and turning the nation into a Muslim caliphate. It reads, in part: “Another effort to insinuate foreign law into this country comes from Islamists who seek to bring here the brutally repressive, anti -constitutional doctrine called ‘shariah.’ …  One of the most insidious groups promoting this agenda with the express aim of ‘destroying Western civilization from within’ is the Muslim Brotherhood. Even though the Brotherhood’s goal is, therefore, exactly the same as al Qaeda’s, the Obama administration believes we must ‘engage’ the Brotherhood.  This is not simply a strategic error of the first order. It is reckless and must be repudiated.” (The Muslim Brotherhood officially renounced violence in the 1970s and is not listed as a terrorist group by the United States.)
No. 7 would mandate the deployment of the military on the U.S. border “where necessary.”
No. 11 would “mandate” what has been unwavering policy in the United States for 220 years: civilian control of the military and military policy. This is an apparent nod to “Patriot” and other conspiracy theorists who believe the government is poised to impose martial law to advance a dastardly plan to destroy U.S. sovereignty.
The CSP pledge request joins a parade of others being peddled this election cycle.
The Family Leader, an Iowa-based conservative Christian group, in July introduced candidates’ “Marriage Vow” pledge to promote traditional marriage. But its original language implying that black families were better off during slavery triggered a controversy that overshadowed its primary purpose – opposing same-sex marriage. Other pledges – to oppose abortion rights, to “investigate harassment of traditional marriage supporters” (presumably by LGBT activists), and to replace the tax code, among others – have been signed by various candidates. All are seeking to replicate the success of Grover Norquist’s 25-year-old anti-tax-increase pledge, which has been signed by 95% of the Republican members of Congress.

Summary: In a presidential election season already featuring a raft of insidious candidate “pledges” pushed by right-wing interest groups hoping to swap endorsements for commitments to their pet biases, it was only a matter of time before what might be termed the “Islamophobia/New World Order pledge” surfaced. And so it has. It’s being put forth by the Center for Security Policy (CSP), whose founder and president is anti-Muslim propagandist Frank Gaffney (see also here ). The 12 points of the latest…


Hatewatch

Between Wednesday, November 9, the day after the presidential election, and the morning of Monday, November 14, the Southern Poverty Law Center collected 437 reports of hateful intimidation and harassment.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Florida Man Arrested for Racist Threats Once Attacked an African American Police Officer
June 28, 2019
Rachel Janik
A long string of felony charges and a tip-off from the Department of Homeland Security led to the arrest of a Florida man for racist and antisemitic threats posted to Gab and Bitchute.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
White Nationalist Threats Against Transgender People Are Escalating
June 26, 2019
Cassie Miller
Transphobic rhetoric, some of it violent, appears to be increasing among white nationalists and neo-Nazis as the fight for transgender rights gains visibility and public support.


Hatewatch

Following revelations that he had appeared on a right-wing nationalist podcast and protested the removal of Lost Cause statues while dressed in tropes popular with far right street demonstrators, the principal of New Orleans’ Crescent Leadership Academy was removed from his post .


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 4/6/2017
April 06, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
Judges knock down anti-LGBT job discrimination; Pressure on Trump over surge in hate crimes; Teachers begin taking on white nationalism; and more.


Hatewatch

BERKELEY, California — Antigovernment extremists stood shoulder-to-shoulder with "alt-right" extremists and anti-feminists. Nearby, a ragtag mix of Trump supporters were draped in American flags and decked in helmets stickered with images of Pepe the Frog, the popular cartoon frog meme employed by the white nationalist “alt-right.”
They carried clubs and medical kits, radios and reinforcement in the event of violent skirmishes that have shaken the University of California, Berkeley campus. But by Thursday’s end, the next chapter in what Richard Spencer has called “The Battle of Berkeley” was a bust.

Summary: BERKELEY, California — Antigovernment extremists stood shoulder-to-shoulder with "alt-right" extremists and anti-feminists. Nearby, a ragtag mix of Trump supporters were draped in American flags and decked in helmets stickered with images of Pepe the Frog, the popular cartoon frog meme employed by the white nationalist “alt-right.” They carried clubs and medical kits, radios and reinforcement in the event of violent skirmishes that have shaken the University of California, Berkeley campus. But…


Hatewatch

Justice Department prosecutors are having about as much trouble convicting members of the “Bundy gang” as federal agents faced in their failed attempt to round-up cattle during the infamous 2014 standoff at Bunkerville, Nevada.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 4/21/2017
April 21, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
Why militia groups are still surging in number; Trump invites Ted Nugent to the White House; Sullivan keeps plugging debunked race theories; and more.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 7/7/2017
July 07, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
Trump skips visit to Warsaw Ghetto; Alt-Right factionalism; Alex Jones' newest conspiracy theory; and more.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Anne Frank Memorial in Idaho Vandalized
May 10, 2017
Bill Morlin
Racist and anti-Semitic graffiti were scrawled on two outdoor marble tablets at the Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial in Boise, Idaho — the only memorial of its kind in the United States.


Hatewatch

One American News Network (OANN) correspondent Jack Posobiec reached one million Twitter followers over Labor Day weekend. He has repeatedly used the website to promote hate and disinformation and is currently promoting unsubstantiated and potentially inflammatory claims suggesting that Democrats are plotting to steal the 2020 election from President Trump.


Hatewatch


Militia Leader Sought After Shots Fired at Officers

A manhunt was underway Monday in a remote area near the Idaho-Montana border for an antigovernment militia leader who fired shots at pursuing deputies a day earlier. David Burgert , recently released from federal prison for involvement in a plot to assassinate police and elected officials, was being hunted by sheriff’s deputies from two western Montana counties.
An FBI SWAT team from Salt Lake City was flown to Montana and joined the manhunt at daybreak for Burgert, who has a diagnosed paranoid personality disorder, law enforcement officials said. Details of the manhunt were sketchy because there is no cell phone service in the area, about 5 miles west of Lolo, Mont., and north of U.S. Highway 12.  The terrain is mountainous and heavily timbered.
A command post for the manhunt was setup at the Lumberjack Saloon, where the fleeing Burgert waved at patrons before disappearing into the woods and shooting at deputies on Sunday. The deputies weren’t hit and returned fire as Burgert fled into the woods. Various law enforcement officials said there were indications Burgert may have planned the encounter and hidden weapon or food caches in the search area.
Just last week when he was stopped by a Montana Highway patrolman, Burgert told the trooper “he wasn’t going to be taken down like the last time” and “it would take a SWAT team” to bring him in, the Billings Gazette reported.
The latest encounter between Burgert and law enforcement occurred Sunday when Missoula County deputies were dispatched to check on a Blue Jeep Cherokee that had been parked for a long time near Fort Fizzle, a day-use picnic area on Highway 12. As deputies approached, authorities said Burgert sped away west on Highway 12, eventually turning northbound on Graves Creek Road, driving past   the Lumberjack Saloon.
A short distance away, he stopped his vehicle and fired a handgun at approaching deputies, Missoula County Undersheriff Mike Dominick told the Billings Gazette . “This is a very dangerous person,’’ the undersheriff said. “I believe he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot at anyone or kidnap somebody to get their rigs.”
In 2002, Burgert headed an antigovernment militia group called “Project 7” in Flathead County, in northwestern Montana, about 120 miles north of where the current manhunt is underway. The “Project 7” militia was heavily armed and was allegedly plotting to assassinate local officials, battle the National Guard and attempt to overthrow the federal government.
That antigovernment group was dismantled with the 2002 arrest of Burgert on federal firearms charges. He was sentenced to eight years in prison where he filed civil suits against city, county and federal officials. Those suits later were dismissed as frivolous.
“This situation is  strikingly similar to the events leading up to his arrest back in 2002,’’ said Travis McAdam, executive director of the Montana Human Rights Network, which monitors extremist activities in that state. “It’s important to remember that this guy went to prison after leading a militia group that was stockpiling ammunition and planning to assassinate local criminal justice employees,’’ McAdam said. “Those hardcore antigovernment views don’t change overnight, or in this case even after six years in prison. We think law enforcement is correct to view him as incredibly dangerous.”
Burgert was released from prison in March 2010 and reportedly had been living in Missoula. He has an ex-wife and son who live near Kalispell, but they have had no contact with him, according to Flathead County Undersheriff Jordan White.
Burgert, however, has estranged family members and former associates living in Montana.  White said Burgert has no known connections with a new antigovernment patriot group,  "Flathead Liberty Bell,"  created in 2009 after a visit and speech by Francis Schaeffer Cox , who later moved to Fairbanks, Alaska.
In March, Cox and five other militia leaders were arrested in high-profile firearms, murder and kidnapping plot. Authorities seized hand grenades, a silencer and an unregistered machine gun in that case. Cox, 27, currently is in jail on federal charges accusing him of plotting to plot to kill Alaska state troopers and a federal judge, along with amassing the Militias are part of the so-called “Patriot” movement, whose conspiracy-minded members typically see the federal government as their primary enemy. The movement has grown significantly in the last two years.

Summary: A manhunt was underway Monday in a remote area near the Idaho-Montana border for an antigovernment militia leader who fired shots at pursuing deputies a day earlier. David Burgert , recently released from federal prison for involvement in a plot to assassinate police and elected officials, was being hunted by sheriff’s deputies from two western Montana counties. An FBI SWAT team from Salt Lake City was flown to Montana and joined the manhunt at daybreak for Burgert, who has a diagnosed…


Hatewatch

Kelly Bryan Schneider, who confessed to the brutal beating death of a gay man in Idaho, was sentenced to 28 years in prison this week after admitting that he committed the crime because of the victim’s sexual orientation.


Family Research Council Reposts Discredited Anti-Gay ‘Science’

For a while there, it seemed like the religious right group Family Research Council (FRC) was making some attempt to clean its website of bogus “research” that defamed gays. Material that peddled a series of falsehoods — in particular, the articles “Homosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse,” “The Negative Health Effects of Homosexuality,” and “Homosexual Parenting: Placing Children at Risk” — went missing from the website. These studies contained several lies, the most important being that gays molest children at far higher rates than heterosexuals; that same-sex parents harm children; and that gays don’t live nearly as long as heterosexuals.
In 2009, FRC claimed the material had been taken down because the sources used for the articles were, in FRC’s words, “outdated.” But thanks to the dogged efforts of blogger Alvin McEwen, we now know that that defamatory material has found its way back onto FRC’s website. Not only that: Where the reports used to have a disclaimer that marked them as outdated, they no longer do.
This year, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) began listing FRC as a hate group, based precisely on the kinds of material that McEwen points out. Rather than defend the material, the FRC launched a propaganda offensive , saying the SPLC was “maligning” individuals rather than discussing the issues. But, in fact, FRC chief Tony Perkins went on MSNBC in a debate with the SPLC’s Mark Potok and promptly insisted that gays were dangerous to children — a real maligning of individuals, and one that had been proven false years before. Perkins even cited a tiny group of anti-gay pediatricians as his source, making it sound as if their group were actually the nation’s pediatric professional organization. It was not.
The FRC’s reposted material is completely baseless and taken straight from some of the country’s most notorious gay-bashers. Take, for example, “Homosexual Parenting: Placing Children at Risk.” McEwen points out that the piece cites the work of “researcher” Paul Cameron “ to make the case that same-sex household are not simply bad places to raise children, but actually places them in danger (by making them susceptible to incest) — an assertion refuted by more credible researchers and medical bodies.” The piece is back up on the FRC site with no disclaimer.
Cameron is an infamous anti-gay propagandist whose one-man statistical chop shop, the Family Research Institute, churns out hate literature masquerading as legitimate science. His work has been rejected by both the American Psychological Association and the American Sociological Association. With these repostings, it seems clear that the FRC’s anti-gay propaganda offensive against the LGBT community won’t be letting up any time soon — and that the FRC would in fact rather malign individuals than have an honest debate on the issues.

Summary: For a while there, it seemed like the religious right group Family Research Council (FRC) was making some attempt to clean its website of bogus “research” that defamed gays. Material that peddled a series of falsehoods — in particular, the articles “Homosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse,” “The Negative Health Effects of Homosexuality,” and “Homosexual Parenting: Placing Children at Risk” — went missing from the website. These studies contained several lies, the most important being that gays…


Hatewatch

John Tanton, the racist architect of the modern anti-immigrant movement, has left behind a legacy that spawned more than a dozen nativist organizations, driven an anti-immigrant agenda for four decades, and found friends in the White House.


Hatewatch

“Breitbart is a company staffed almost entirely by Jews,” said Milo Yiannopolous last November when asked about accusations of anti-Semitism made against his former boss, Stephen Bannon. “I am a gay Jew, and he made me into a star.”


Hatewatch

Ann Coulter , an infamous far-right attack dog who has spent years attacking the left, was at the Christmas party of a racist anti-immigration group earlier this month — the second such event she has attended since September.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 2/15/2017
February 15, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
Trump’s ‘genius bar’ of white nationalists; Priebus in nationalists’ sights; Jones claims Obama’s plotting anti-Trump revolt; and more.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 2/6/2017
February 06, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
‘Trump is setting us free,’ supremacists say; Jewish center bomb threats add up; Bannon film outline feared Islamist takeover; and more.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Suspect in Canadian Mosque Shooting Expressed Right-Wing Views Online
January 31, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
A suspect in custody for a
deadly mosque shooting over the weekend
in Quebec City, Canada, left a trail of right-wing extremist rants online and in social networks.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 1/26/2017
January 26, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
Kobach says he advised Trump on voter fraud probe and immigration orders; Tracking hate crimes, and doing it better; Origins of the alt-right; and more.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 1/23/2017
January 23, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
White nationalist cowrote Trump’s speech; We’ve heard ‘America First’ before; Spencer punching video goes viral; and more.


Hatewatch

There have been some big changes for white nationalist leader Richard Spencer –– a posh townhouse in Alexandria, Va., and a new website, Altright.com, staffed with a cadre of well-known leaders of the radical right.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 1/11/2017
January 11, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
Bomb threats leave Jewish communities rattled; Sheriff’s wall-building plan hyped; School vouchers’ racist history; and more.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 11/17/2016
November 17, 2016
Hatewatch Staff
Twitter suspends alt-right accounts; Will Trump roll back the hate?; Bannon’s white-nationalist worldview explained; and more.


Hatewatch

Police and city officials in Charlottesville, Virginia, were inadequately prepared for August’s violent and deadly racist alt-right rally that’s become a watershed event, a new report concludes.arlott


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 8/30/18
August 30, 2018
Hatewatch Staff
A U.S. Senate candidate will speak alongside extremists; another Trump administration official has ties to white nationalists; climate change and systemic racism, and more.


Hatewatch


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
White Nationalist Threats Against Transgender People Are Escalating
June 26, 2019
Cassie Miller
Transphobic rhetoric, some of it violent, appears to be increasing among white nationalists and neo-Nazis as the fight for transgender rights gains visibility and public support.


Louisiana High Court Says Confederate Flag ‘Offensive’

In spring 2009, a Caddo Parish, La., prosecutor struck Carl Staples from the pool of potential jurors in the capital murder trial of Felton Dejuan Dorsey.
Staples was not removed from the jury pool because he opposed the death penalty. Rather, the prosecutor dismissed Staples after he expressed reservations about serving as a juror in a building whose courtyard features a prominently displayed Confederate flag.
“[The flag] is a symbol of one of the most … heinous crimes ever committed to another member of the human race,” Staples, who is black, told the judge. “You're here for justice, and then again you overlook this great injustice by continuing to fly this flag which … put[s] salt in the wounds of … people of color. I don't buy it.”
That summer, a jury of 11 white people and one black person found Dorsey guilty of first degree murder and recommended he be sentenced to die by lethal injection. Dorsey is black. The victim was white.
The population of Caddo Parish is around 50% black, but court records show that the white prosecutor in Dorsey’s case struck potential jurors who were black at three times the rate he struck potential jurors who were white.
Dorsey appealed the case all the way to Louisiana’s high court. He was joined by the American Civil Liberties Union , which filed a friend of the court brief arguing that the flag’s presence imperiled justice in two ways: First, by excluding jurors like Carl Staples, and second, by “implicitly encouraging courthouse participants to treat African-American defendants and victims as second-class citizens.” The court on Sept. 7 upheld Dorsey’s conviction and sentence on procedural grounds – but conceded in its decision “that the display of a confederate flag would be offensive to some.”
For that reason, attorney Anna Arceneaux, who is counsel for the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, remains optimistic. “We fully expect that trial judges and defense attorneys in the future are going to be objecting, and frankly after this decision there’s no reason not to,” she told the Southern Poverty Law Center. “We’re hopeful that in the future when [the issue] is better preserved in a way that’s satisfactory to the Louisiana Supreme Court that they will take a stand that the presence of the Confederate flag is intolerable in death penalty case.”
In its brief , the ACLU cited academic research showing that “exposure to the Confederate flag increased the expression of negative attitude toward African-Americans among whites.” Regardless, removing the emblem that flaps in front of Caddo County’s courthouse will likely be an uphill battle, for the Confederate flag is a contentious issue across the South. Its defenders claim that it’s a symbol of “heritage, not hate” – but as Ta-Nehisi Coates of the Atlantic points out , “the question isn't "Do you hate black people?" It isn't "Would you invite a black person to your barbecue?" It's "Are you more offended by black people who recoil in horror at the Confederate flag, than you are by the flag's history?"
Only two weeks ago, officials in the city of Lexington, Va., voted to ban the flying of Confederate flags on poles owned by the city. The Southern Heritage group Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) is promising to fight the ordinance in court. Around the same time, the Georgia chapter of the SCV hoisted three enormous Confederate battle flags on private land along that state’s highways. The largest reportedly measures 30 by 50 feet.
Two years ago, Bishop Arthur Dowdell , an elected member of the Auburn, Ala., City Council and its only black member, was formally condemned by his fellow council members after removing four of the dozens of flags the United Daughters of the Confederacy had placed at a cemetery in honor of Confederate Memorial Day, a state holiday in many Southern states.
The Southern Poverty Law Center in 1993 won a suit to remove the battle flag that had flown atop the Alabama Capitol building since 1963, when arch-segregationist Gov. George Wallace raised it as a symbol of defiance. In 2000, the secessionist League of the South (LOS), a neo-Confederate hate group, rallied in Alabama and several other states to demand flag’s return.
And South Carolina flew the battle flag on its capitol from 1962 till 2000, when, following a major protest led by the NAACP, it became the last state to end the practice. A Confederate flag still flies atop a 30-foot pole in front of the building. This July, the NAACP renewed its objections , asking South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who is of Indian descent, to remove the emblem entirely. Her spokesman told the media, “Revisiting that issue is not part of the governor's agenda.”

Summary: In spring 2009, a Caddo Parish, La., prosecutor struck Carl Staples from the pool of potential jurors in the capital murder trial of Felton Dejuan Dorsey. Staples was not removed from the jury pool because he opposed the death penalty. Rather, the prosecutor dismissed Staples after he expressed reservations about serving as a juror in a building whose courtyard features a prominently displayed Confederate flag. “[The flag] is a symbol of one of the most … heinous crimes ever committed to…


Hatewatch

Hours before members of the Loyal White Knights (LWK) were set to parade through the streets of Pelham, N.C., to celebrate president-elect Donald Trump’s victory last Saturday, the leaders who helped organize the parade turned on one another.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Gorka's Dubious Past Includes Failing Hungary's National Security Test
March 24, 2017
David Neiwert
Trump's Islamophobic foreign-policy adviser had a history of far-right dalliances in Europe after the fall of Communism.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 2/23/2017
February 23, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
Trump turns federal government’s back on transgender citizens as the community faces attacks; threats alarm both Jewish and Muslim communities; a tattoo artist doing his part to fight hate; and more.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 2/13/2017
February 13, 2017
Hatewatch Headlines
How Putin became the global hero of nationalism; Gorka sports a dubious medal; Miller once hassled Hispanic students; and more.


Hatewatch

It hasn’t been a month since the inauguration, and already white nationalists are celebrating President Trump’s flurry of executive orders on immigration and his Supreme Court nominee as a concerted effort to preserve America’s white identity.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
New Item on Sovereign Menu: Tack a Notice on Restaurant Door
February 02, 2017
Bill Morlin
Antigovernment “sovereign citizens” attempting to fraudulently gain possession of abandoned houses is nothing new. But taking over a restaurant? Well, that’s new to the menu of tactics.


Hatewatch

The widow of Robert "LaVoy" Finicum, an antigovernment activist who was killed in the closing days of the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge last year, promised a crowd of almost 500 gathered in Oregon on the year anniversary of his death that she would soon be filing a lawsuit against the federal government.


Hatewatch

An antigovernment militia extremist who describes himself as a self-taught bomb maker and the “Picasso of machine guns” pleaded guilty on Monday to illegally possessing a fully automatic .50 caliber machine gun.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 1/12/2017
January 12, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
Roof hears from victims’ families; Idaho bill would charge women with murder for abortions; Sessions’ real KKK-fighting past; and more.


Hatewatch

A network of anti-LGBT churches used its “Make America Straight Again” conference to move beyond its stock fallacies and hate-filled rhetoric and call for the government to begin rounding up and executing homosexuals.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 11/23/2016
November 23, 2016
Hatewatch Staff
Trump disavows the ‘alt-right,’ sort of; Are media normalizing racist beliefs?; Identity pastor wants crackdown on Jews; and more.


News Roundup for June 28, 2011

White supremacist Mark Stroman will be executed in Texas next month after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review his case.  Stroman was convicted for killing two people and shooting another in a post-9/11 revenge spree targeting people of Middle Eastern descent.
A “general” in the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas has been sentenced to life in prison for ordering the murder of a fellow gang member and his girlfriend in a dispute over a drug debt.
The state trial of sovereign citizens accused of plotting to kill several government officials may be delayed until federal charges are resolved. The defendants are members of the Alaska Peacemakers Militia, led by Schaeffer Cox . Militia members plotted a campaign of murder in the event Cox, a fugitive at the time, was captured.
A West Virginia white supremacist under investigation for possessing child pornography was found to have attempted to frame one of the prime investigators.  Sean Price, 34, allegedly attempted to establish an E-mail account in a police officer’s name and use it to send child pornography to other officers and the media.
Texas is one vote shy of offering license plates emblazoned with the Confederate flag, a controversial move sponsored by the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
A Native American family in Nevada is seeking justice in the aftermath of a brutal attack in May by a group of skinheads. The assault led to severe injuries sustained by several members of the family. But one of the family members was arrested while the skinheads were let go. The leader of the skinheads is the son of a former police officer, and no charges have been brought against the gang.

Summary: White supremacist Mark Stroman will be executed in Texas next month after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review his case.  Stroman was convicted for killing two people and shooting another in a post-9/11 revenge spree targeting people of Middle Eastern descent. A “general” in the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas has been sentenced to life in prison for ordering the murder of a fellow gang member and his girlfriend in a dispute over a drug debt. The state trial of sovereign citizens accused of…


Hatewatch

A Kansas man is in jail on murder and attempted murder charges after allegedly shouting “get out of my country” and racial slurs before firing a handgun Wednesday evening in a crowded sports bar in suburb of Kansas City.


Hatewatch

After several violent protests at the University of California, Berkeley, the 'alt-right' has turned its attention to the home of the Free Speech Movement as a focus to recruit students to the radical right.


Hatewatch

ACT for America — the largest grassroots anti-Muslim group in the country — has come under fire recently. Prominent San Antonio, ACT chapter leader Roy White was fired in late February for refusing to cancel a meeting designed to show activists how to “shut down mosques.”


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
YouTube Yanks Second Red Ice Channel
October 23, 2019
Hannah Gais
YouTube has taken down a second Red Ice channel after the hate network tried to circumvent the media giant’s initial ban.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
In unusual alliance, Infowars, Joey Gibson teaming up for ‘street army’ teams
August 31, 2018
Brett Barrouquere
Infowars and Patriot Prayer’s Joey Gibson haven’t always seen eye-to-eye, with Gibson once calling the creator of the show, Alex Jones, “crazy.”


News Roundup for July 6, 2011

A Tennessee man was sentenced today to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the racially motivated killing of a public employee. Dale Mardis, 57, brutally killed Shelby County, Tenn., code enforcement officer Mickey Wright in April 2001 and recently confessed to an unsolved murder of a Baltimore doctor three years earlier.
Gary Thomas Kelley received 27.5 years in prison today for shooting his neighbor. The Phoenix man confronted Juan Varela, repeating a racial slur and telling him to “go back to Mexico” or he would die, before shooting Varela in the neck. Varela was a third-generation U.S. citizen. The week of the shooting had been marked by protests over Arizona’s controversial SB 1070 immigration law.
Police in Oswego, Ill., have charged a local man with a hate crime for beating a man over his sexual orientation. The victim was allegedly beaten by four men, including the charged suspect, while the group used slurs during the assault.

Summary: A Tennessee man was sentenced today to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the racially motivated killing of a public employee. Dale Mardis, 57, brutally killed Shelby County, Tenn., code enforcement officer Mickey Wright in April 2001 and recently confessed to an unsolved murder of a Baltimore doctor three years earlier. Gary Thomas Kelley received 27.5 years in prison today for shooting his neighbor. The Phoenix man confronted Juan Varela, repeating a racial slur and telling…


Hatewatch


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 11/16/2016
November 16, 2016
Hatewatch Staff
What Bannon in the White House means; We really know little about hate crimes; Church keeps its ‘Heil Trump’ graffiti; and more.


Hatewatch

Ann Coulter , an infamous far-right attack dog who has spent years attacking the left, was at the Christmas party of a racist anti-immigration group earlier this month — the second such event she has attended since September.


Hatewatch

This is the fourth update in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s effort to collect reports of bias-related harassment and intimidation around the country following the election. This update spans the period from November 9 to December 12.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 2/7/2017
February 07, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
The dawn of white nationalist rule; Trump gives green light to violence; Alex Jones and those ‘alternate facts’; and more.


Hatewatch

When President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 on Liberty Island, he had no doubt about the perniciousness of the law that it was replacing. The 1924 Immigration Act, which imposed a racist quota system favoring Northern European whites, was a "cruel and enduring wrong," a "harsh injustice" and "un-American in the highest sense," he said at the signing ceremony .


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
White Nationalist Threats Against Transgender People Are Escalating
June 26, 2019
Cassie Miller
Transphobic rhetoric, some of it violent, appears to be increasing among white nationalists and neo-Nazis as the fight for transgender rights gains visibility and public support.


Hatewatch

In pursuit of a more accurate and more just hate map, the Intelligence Project (IP) has committed to collapsing the Black Separatist listing. We will still monitor these groups, but we will be transferring them to hate ideologies, including antisemitism, that better describe the harm their rhetoric inflicts.


Hatewatch

Hate crimes against Muslims surged by 67% during 2015, according to new statistics released by the FBI on Sunday. The rise, far higher than in any other major category of hate crimes, came during a year marked by news of atrocities by the Islamic State and Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
White Nationalist State Department Official Surfaces in Photographs
August 09, 2019
Michael Edison Hayden
Hatewatch has obtained images of Matthew Q. Gebert, a State Department official who is involved in the white nationalist movement.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Identity Dixie Leaders Helped Plan Deadly Rally
July 26, 2019
Hatewatch Staff
Behind the shield of anonymity, members of a neo-Confederate hate group appeared to have emerged without consequences for their participation in a deadly Virginia rally. But that shield has vanished.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Despite Bans, U.S. Anti-LGBT Pastor Continues Pushing Into Africa
January 05, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
Despite being kicked out of Africa for his rhetoric, anti-LGBT pastor Steven Anderson is returning to the continent. And this time, he has help.


Hatewatch

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, whose pursuit of voter restriction and anti-immigrant laws made him a leading light of the nativist movement , announced today that he will run for governor in 2018.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Minuteman Project not a religious experience, officials rule
November 29, 2005
Hatewatch Staff


Hatewatch

The acting director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) became the latest Trump administration official to speak at an event organized by the anti-immigrant hate group Center for Immigration Studies.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Attorney With Ties to Anti-LGBT Groups Hired for Key Government Agency
September 20, 2019
Hatewatch Staff
Right-wing attorney, writer and legal analyst Ken Klukowski has landed a position in the Trump administration in the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).


Hatewatch

Kentucky’s governor has appointed an attorney who worked closely with an anti-LGBT hate group to the Board of Trustees for the University of Kentucky, a school that previously received a top national ranking for being LGBTQ-friendly.


Hatewatch


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Mar-a-Lago Pulls Plug on Anti-Muslim Hate Group’s Gala
October 07, 2019
Hatewatch Staff
The Trump Organization says the anti-Muslim hate group
ACT for America
’s Nov. 7 gala is no longer welcome at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort.


Prominent White Nationalist Louis Andrews Has Died

Louis R. Andrews, most recently the chairman of the white nationalist outfit National Policy Institute (NPI), died on Dec. 30, according to a tweet put out by his book-selling business Washington Summit Publishers. Andrews has long been involved in the white nationalist movement, having run the hate website Stalking the Wild Taboo for years in addition to his publishing house.
Last year, Andrews moved to Whitefish, Mont., joining a growing movement of white supremacists who have relocated to the state. Prior to joining NPI, Andrews was with the Charles Martel Society and served as managing editor of the organization’s racist publication The Occidental Quarterly . He was also a fixture at white nationalist events, including conferences put on by the race science publication, American Renaissance .
For more on Andrews, check out the Southern Poverty Law Center’s 2006 profile here .

Summary: Louis R. Andrews, most recently the chairman of the white nationalist outfit National Policy Institute (NPI), died on Dec. 30, according to a tweet put out by his book-selling business Washington Summit Publishers. Andrews has long been involved in the white nationalist movement, having run the hate website Stalking the Wild Taboo for years in addition to his publishing house. Last year, Andrews moved to Whitefish, Mont., joining a growing movement of white supremacists who have relocated to…


AFA’s Bryan Fischer: HIV Doesn’t Cause AIDS

It’s tempting to describe American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer as a close-minded, reactionary bigot. But when it comes to embracing fresh ideas that support his beliefs – heck, he pretty much outdoes us all.
Remember when he said that gays were responsible for the Holocaust? Or the time he claimed that states can require public officials to pass religious tests, directly contradicting both a 50-year-old Supreme Court decision and the express wishes of the Founding Fathers themselves? These are not exactly mainstream theories, but, ever open-minded, Fischer adopted them anyway.
And just when you think he’s reached the outermost limits of revisionism, Fischer one-ups himself by promoting a theory so breathtakingly outrageous that it makes his previous claims seem tame.
Well, he’s done it again, declaring during an anti-gay tirade on his radio show Tuesday that there is no connection between the HIV virus and AIDS.
He even had someone to back him up: Peter Duesberg, a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California at Berkeley whose hypothesis about AIDS has made him a pariah among his peers.
Once revered as a genius for his pioneering cancer research, Duesberg since 1987 has been a leading proponent of the so-called “denialist” hypothesis that HIV does not cause AIDS. He offers a range of possible alternative causes, claiming at different times that AIDS is a “fabricated epidemic,” that it is triggered by the use of recreational drugs, and that it is caused by the antiretroviral drugs that have improved and prolonged the lives of countless HIV-infected persons.
That’s not what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says.
“The scientific evidence is overwhelming that HIV is the cause of AIDS,” Dr. Jonathan Mermin, director of the CDC’s Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, told Hatewatch via E-mail. “Infection with HIV has been the sole common factor shared by people with AIDS throughout the world. In addition, antiretroviral medicines developed specifically against HIV have been associated with dramatic reductions in the incidence of AIDS and mortality. Statements that AIDS is not caused by HIV are misleading and potentially dangerous.”
That seems an understatement. In 2000, Duesberg served on a commission charged by then-South African President Thabo Mbeki with determining whether HIV caused AIDS. Already inclined to disbelieve the connection, Mbeki accepted the conclusion that the two were not linked, leading to a disastrous public policy that caused an estimated 330,000 South Africans to die from AIDS, according to a 2010 report in AIDS and Behavior , a public health journal.
On Fischer’s show, Duesberg said that intravenous drugs are responsible for 50% of all cases of AIDS in America. “Most of the rest of the other half is male homosexuals – but not your all-American male homosexual from next door,” he said. “It’s the ones who have what they call ‘cruising,’ that have hundreds of – thousands of – sexual contacts in a short time. They can only accomplish that like our Olympians break records now, by taking lots of drugs.”
Fischer interviewed Duesberg in the context of discussing a proposed Los Angeles ordinance that would require performers in pornographic films to use condoms on the set.
Duesberg’s statistics – which suggest that half of AIDS patients are IV drug users and half are promiscuous gay men who use drugs to enhance their libido – do not quite square with reality. The CDC’s most recent statistics ( here and here ) do show that gay and bisexual men account for the majority of new HIV infections – 61% in 2009 – and that overall, 49% of Americans living with AIDS are gay or bisexual men. Neither numbers nor science say that all these men were drug-addicted sex fiends – and more to the point, 27% of those infected in 2009 were heterosexuals. Only 9% were IV drug users.
Asked to respond to the CDC’s statement about his hypothesis, Duesberg challenged the authority of the CDC, demanding evidence to back up this reporter’s characterization of the organization as an internationally recognized authority on epidemiology.
He also acknowledged that he had not heard of Bryan Fischer prior to speaking on his show. In response, Hatewatch provided him with several examples of Fischer’s most offensive and inaccurate anti-gay comments, reading verbatim his 2010 declaration that “Homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and six million dead Jews.”
Duesberg – who, according to a lengthy 2008 profile in Discover magazine, was born in Münster, Germany, in 1936 and grew up to the tune of air raid sirens, and whose father volunteered to serve in the German army – said he had never heard that theory before, and said he would need to see the context of Fischer’s comment before passing judgment. When Hatewatch forwarded him a link to Fischer’s original blog post, he responded via E-mail, “I am not ready to comment on Bryan Fischer at this time, beyond our radio discussion of AIDS until I had a chance to talk to him directly. I have seen too many examples, including my own, where a scientifically correct point of view is twisted into a politically incorrect one, to diminish an opponents [sic] character.”
He also wrote, “I do not ‘marginalize’ male or female homosexuals. On the contrary, I have sacrifized [sic] status and career investments to find a scientific answer to AIDS, which is primarily a gay syndrome in the US.”
Duesberg may not seek to marginalize LGBT people (though, according to the Discover article, he repeatedly referred to them as “homos”) – but Bryan Fischer certainly does. Summing up his takeaway from Duesberg in a blog post yesterday, he wrote, “Bottom line? HIV does not cause AIDS. So let’s immediately stop spending billions of dollars trying to kill a harmless microbe. And secondly, let’s tell homosexuals to stop sleeping with other men, stop using poppers, and stop shooting up. If they listen to that message, public health will improve, everybody will live longer, and taxpayers will be able to keep more of their money. What’s not to like?”
“That,” responded Brian Chase of the Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which is pushing the condom ordinance, “might be one of the dumbest things Bryan Fischer’s ever said – and that is saying quite a bit.”

Summary: It’s tempting to describe American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer as a close-minded, reactionary bigot. But when it comes to embracing fresh ideas that support his beliefs – heck, he pretty much outdoes us all. Remember when he said that gays were responsible for the Holocaust? Or the time he claimed that states can require public officials to pass religious tests, directly contradicting both a 50-year-old Supreme Court decision and the express wishes of the Founding Fathers…


Trial Opens for White Supremacist Twins Accused in Arizona Bombing

White supremacist twins Dennis and Daniel Mahon went on trial today in Phoenix, charged with mailing a package bomb in 2004 that exploded and injured a black man who was a city official in Scottsdale.
The 61-year-old longtime racists were arrested in 2009 after a five-year undercover investigation involving an attractive female informant who put a Confederate flag in her window and ultimately befriended the Mahons.
The informant for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also gave two sexually provocative pictures to the Mahons in a successful attempt to win their trust and attention. In one of the pictures, the ATF informant wore a white bikini top with a grenade hanging between her breasts as she posed in front of a Nazi swastika.
As the friendship flourished, the woman’s conversations with the Mahons were secretly recorded, providing federal investigators with a possible road map to unsolved bombings, court records disclose.
In conversations with the woman, Dennis Mahon showed her how to make bombs and bragged about bombing a Jewish community center, an abortion clinic, an Internal Revenue Service building and an immigration facility. He also talked to the informant about the Scottsdale bombing, claiming he didn’t do it but that he assisted white police officers who did. His claims about the other bombings have not been corroborated, but likely have provided leads for federal investigators, according to various media accounts.
The Mahons are both charged with conspiracy to damage buildings and property by means of explosive. Dennis Mahon also is charged with malicious damage of a building by means of explosive and distribution of information related to explosives.
The investigation also snared Robert Joos Jr., an antigovernment zealot and pastor of a church of “apocalyptic Christians.” He is serving a 78-month federal prison sentence after being convicted in January 2010 in Springfield, Mo., of being a felon in possession of firearms and a felon in possession of explosives.
The Mahons also have past ties to Thomas Metzger and his white supremacist White Aryan Resistance (WAR). While his name surfaced in the Scottsdale bombing investigation, Metzger has not been charged criminally.
The undercover investigation began after a cardboard box was sent to the Scottsdale Office of Diversity and Dialogue, addressed to the office’s director, Donald Logan. When Logan opened the box on Feb. 26, 2004, it exploded, severely burning his arms and damaging his fingers. His assistant, Renita Linyard, was seriously injured, and another employee, Jacque Bell, suffered minor injuries.
While discussing the Scottsdale bombing, Dennis Mahon said he “just wanted to teach (Logan) a lesson the first time.”
Dennis Mahon also is accused of making a call to the diversity office in September 2003 and saying, “the white Aryan resistance is growing in Scottsdale. There’s a few white people who are standing up.”
In pretrial motions, Mahon’s defense attorney, Milagros Cisneros, argued that Mahon was merely boasting in an attempt to impress the woman who had infatuated him.
Cisneros and other defense attorneys unsuccessfully attempted to get the criminal charges dismissed on the grounds that use of the seductive informant amounted to outrageous government conduct, entrapment and coercion. The judge denied those motions after federal prosecutors said the government informant never kissed or had sex with either brother.
Before moving to Arizona, the Mahons lived in Tulsa, Okla., in the 1990s, and Dennis Mahon was a Ku Klux Klan grand dragon in Oklahoma.
Dennis Mahon’s name also surfaced during a grand jury investigation of the Oklahoma City federal building bombing on April 19, 1995, that killed 168 people.   Dennis Mahon became a person of interest after a woman claimed she overheard him and a German national discussing bombing federal buildings months before the deadly bombing of the Murrah Building.
Opening statements in the Mahon brothers’ trial are scheduled Thursday, and the trial is expected to last two months.

Summary: White supremacist twins Dennis and Daniel Mahon went on trial today in Phoenix, charged with mailing a package bomb in 2004 that exploded and injured a black man who was a city official in Scottsdale. The 61-year-old longtime racists were arrested in 2009 after a five-year undercover investigation involving an attractive female informant who put a Confederate flag in her window and ultimately befriended the Mahons. The informant for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also…


Neo-Confederate League of the South Espouses Posse Comitatus Ideology

Affirming his group’s embrace of antigovernment “Patriot” ideology, League of the South (LOS) President Michael Hill on Monday sent members an E-Mail declaring the federal government an “organized criminal enterprise” led by “domestic terrorists” and telling his followers to prepare for a fight.
“I discourage the formation of private militias except as a last resort,” he wrote. “If your State and local officials refuse to serve the citizens and to protect them by the historic means of Nullification, Interposition, or Secession, then you may have reached the ‘last resort.’”
It’s not especially shocking that a group that advocates secession and sees the Civil War as an aggressive attack on a peaceful people would articulate these ideas, particularly in an era that has seen a significant rise in Patriot activity overall. The LOS has been drifting in this direction since at least 2007, and the rhetoric at its July 2011 national conference stressed Patriot and survivalist themes more than ever.
What is surprising, however, is how deep into Patriot territory the LOS has apparently lurched. Amidst the usual condemnations of Abraham Lincoln and talk of using states’ rights to oppose the federal government, Hill declared, “We can also use our counties as bulwarks against the criminal class. The County Sheriff is the principal peace officer in his jurisdiction. As such, he can lawfully tell the Feds to ‘Go to Hell’ and stay out of his territory. He also can deputize as many of the county's citizens as he wishes and have them armed to the teeth. No one can over-rule him within his boundaries. Make sure your current Sheriff knows his authority and to whom he answers (you and your neighbors). If he is unwilling to use his authority for the good of the people of his jurisdiction, replace him at the first opportunity.”
These ideas come straight out of the playbook of the Posse Comitatus , a racist, anti-Semitic group that raged through the Midwest in the late 1970s and 1980s. A precursor to the modern “sovereign citizens” movement, the Posse Comitatus believed that sheriffs were the only legal law enforcers in the country.
It makes sense that Posse Comitatus and sovereign citizen ideology would appeal to the LOS. Most sovereigns base their belief they are not bound by most laws on the idea that they are “organic citizens” whose rights are God-given, as opposed to “14 th Amendment citizens,” whose rights derive solely from the U.S. Constitution. Unsurprisingly, the LOS despises the 14 th Amendment (which expanded the concept of citizenship to include anyone born in the United States, including blacks), calling it the most “nefarious consequence of the Reconstruction” and claiming that its ratification was illegal. (In fact, the ratification of the 14 th Amendment did involve strong-arm tactics. After the Civil War, Southern states were granted re-entry into the Union only on the condition that they ratify it. Of course, America at the time had just fought the bloodiest war in her history over the issue of slavery, and extending citizenship to newly freed slaves was a vital component of Reconstruction.) Sovereign ideology allows whites to reject the 14 th Amendment and proclaim themselves the true Americans, free from what they perceive as an overweening and downright criminal federal government. For the racist LOS, it would be a way to simultaneously affirm whites’ superiority over blacks and reject the portions of the Constitution they despise.
The LOS has not fully adopted sovereign citizen ideas – yet. But in mid-March, the group’s Georgia chapter will hold a symposium on “The 14 th Amendment and it [sic] Legal Transformation,” exploring such topics as citizenship and “[h]ow the 14 th amendment transformed our political status and system of law.” One of the speakers will be Roger Sayles – presumably, the same Roger Sayles who declared himself a sovereign citizen in 1992 and believes that the 14th Amendment applies to “the citizenship of the Negro,” not whites. Another presenter will be Pat Shannan, a conspiracy theorist who in a recent column for the anti-Semitic American Free Press praised the Montana Freeman, a heavily armed antigovernment group that in 1996 engaged in the longest police-standoff siege in U.S. history, for embodying “true Americanism.”

Summary: Affirming his group’s embrace of antigovernment “Patriot” ideology, League of the South (LOS) President Michael Hill on Monday sent members an E-Mail declaring the federal government an “organized criminal enterprise” led by “domestic terrorists” and telling his followers to prepare for a fight. “I discourage the formation of private militias except as a last resort,” he wrote. “If your State and local officials refuse to serve the citizens and to protect them by the historic means of…


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 9/1/2017
September 01, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
Why Islamophobia has never been stronger; Clarke expected to take Trump admin post; Stormer tries, and fails, to get back online in Albania; and more.


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John Tanton, the racist architect of the modern anti-immigrant movement, has left behind a legacy that spawned more than a dozen nativist organizations, driven an anti-immigrant agenda for four decades, and found friends in the White House.


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Kelly Bryan Schneider, who confessed to the brutal beating death of a gay man in Idaho, was sentenced to 28 years in prison this week after admitting that he committed the crime because of the victim’s sexual orientation.


Hatewatch

Neo-Nazis, white nationalists and antigovernment extremists are publishing volumes of propaganda advocating terrorism and mass shootings on Telegram, a Hatewatch review of hundreds of channels on that app reveals.


Jury Convicts  Texas ‘Sovereign’ Who Shot at Cop

UPDATE 2.2.12: The jury sentenced James Michael Tesi to 35 years in prison.
A self-described “sovereign citizen,” who also called himself a “Moorish American,” has been convicted in Fort Worth, Texas, of shooting at a police officer who tried to arrest him for traffic violations last summer.
James Michael Tesi, 49, was taken into custody following the jury verdict Tuesday, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported. The 12-member jury immediately began the penalty phase. Tesi faces up to life in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Tesi, an occupational therapist, was charged with aggravated assault on a public servant with a deadly weapon. The charge stems from a series of encounters he had with police for not wearing a seat belt, speeding, failing to show up in court and not producing a valid driver’s licenses.
Like growing numbers of sovereign citizens , Tesi apparently believed state and federal laws don’t apply to him.
A recent FBI report labeled sovereign citizens the most significant domestic terrorism threat, and a particularly dangerous one for law enforcement. “Law enforcement and judicial officials must understand the sovereign-citizen movement, be able to identify indicators, and know how to protect themselves from the group’s threatening tactics,” the report said.
The Fort Worth shooting is just the latest in a growing list of encounters between police and sovereigns. In May 2010, two West Memphis, Ark., officers were shot dead when they stopped a father-son team of sovereigns.
When Officer John Fossett saw Tesi driving last July 21 in the Fort Worth suburb of Hurst, the officer knew there was a warrant for his arrest and followed the fugitive to his home. After parking his vehicle in his garage, Tesi came out firing a weapon. The uniformed police officer returned fire, wounding Tesi in the face and leg. The officer was unharmed.
During the five-day trial, defense attorney Ronald Hardin attempted to cast doubt on the police version of the shooting. In closing arguments, he urged jurors to concentrate on physical evidence and said the police officer gave three versions of what occurred. His client, meanwhile, feared for his life. “He knows in his mind that officer Fossett is there to kill him” because of his beliefs, the defense attorney said.
After being shot in the exchange of gunfire, Tesi said, “If I’m going to die, I wanted to die at home,” Hardin told the jury.
But the jury didn’t buy the defense’s explanation and apparently agreed with the prosecutor, who said that Tesi did not shoot in self-defense. “You don’t get to intentionally evade an officer, send threats to the city or pull a gun on an officer,” Tarrant County prosecutor Jim Hudson told the jury. “Mr. Tesi is not on trial for his beliefs.”

Summary: UPDATE 2.2.12: The jury sentenced James Michael Tesi to 35 years in prison. A self-described “sovereign citizen,” who also called himself a “Moorish American,” has been convicted in Fort Worth, Texas, of shooting at a police officer who tried to arrest him for traffic violations last summer. James Michael Tesi, 49, was taken into custody following the jury verdict Tuesday, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported. The 12-member jury immediately began the penalty phase. Tesi faces up to life in…


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 8/10/2018
August 10, 2018
Hatewatch Staff
Jones brings Facebook’s global demons home; Gab threatened with hosting loss; Ingraham’s nationalist rant targets even legal immigrants; and more.


Once Again, FAIR Reveals Its Black Heart of Hate

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) has never been a pleasant organization. Its top leaders have warned shrilly of a “Latin onslaught,” defended a racist 1924 quota system, insisted that America needs a “European-American majority,” and fretted that Latinos are “outbreeding” white people. Its founder has sought ways to sterilize unmarried mothers, corresponded with white supremacists and Holocaust deniers, and suggested, among other things, that it might be a good thing to prohibit less intelligent citizens from having children.
But FAIR, the nation’s leading nativist organization and one that is frequently quoted in the press, has insisted it is not about hatred, that some unfortunate remarks of its founder are ancient history and have nothing to do with the group today.
Two events this week once again gave the lie to those claims.
In California, news broke that a man named Jose Navarro, who had been on a kidney transplant list for six years, was refused the transplant just days before the operation was to be scheduled because UC San Francisco officials discovered that he was an undocumented immigrant. Even when Navarro’s wife stepped in and offered to donate her own compatible kidney, doctors refused the life-saving surgery. The fact that Navarro had private insurance didn’t sway hospital officials either.
None of this bothered the generous humanitarians at FAIR. Such care, FAIR’s top spokesman, Ira Mehlman, told ABC News, “should be the responsibility of the home country,” adding that “in a situation like this, where there is an opportunity for someone to leave the country and get care, they need to do so.”
And in Missouri, a Guatemalan mother who was jailed for two years after an immigration raid at the poultry plant where she worked prepared to go to court in an attempt to regain custody of the 5-year-old boy who was given to a white couple while she was behind bars. Circuit Court Judge David C. Dally ended her parental rights because her “lifestyle” included crossing the border illegally and using fake identity papers, even while ignoring the criminal background of the adoptive father.
As with the hospital officials in the California case, the actions of the judge were loathsome enough — according to ABC News, Encarnacion Bail Romero wasn’t even assigned a lawyer until two months after losing custody. But it took FAIR to put that special, heartless spin on the case for which it is known.
FAIR President Dan Stein, who has said that many Central Americans “hate America,” told ABC the mother was to blame: “When parents break the law, they undertake a certain amount of risk that there are going to be consequences.”
The black-hearted ideologues at FAIR couldn’t care less that Bail Romero, whose son was just seven months old when officials stole him away, was jailed on on aggravated identity theft charges — charges that the U.S. Supreme Court has since rejected in cases like hers, according to ABC News. They don’t give a fig that she was unable to attend the custody hearings, or that she said from the start that she didn’t want her son adopted out. They had no problem with Dally’s ruling that she had willfully abandoned her son, or with the fact that the adoptive father had served almost a year in jail after pleading guilty to a felony charge of possession of stolen property.
Not everyone is so blindly cruel.
In California, Oakland City Council President Ignacio de la Fuente and many others are trying to find a way to get Navarro the surgery that experts say would probably not be available if he were deported to Mexico. A man named Donald Kagan, a citizen who received a kidney transplant last year from an undocumented immigrant, told ABC that UC San Francisco officials never asked him about his immigration status. “A person … had absolutely nothing and was willing to give his kidney to me,” he said of his benefactor. “What they’re saying is that only people who have money should get transplants, and it shouldn’t be that way.”
And in Missouri, the Bail Romero case has drawn attention to what Guatemalan Consulate attorney John DeLeon described as a “massive national problem.” ABC quoted a report from the Applied Research Center, “Shattered Families,” that found that as of last summer some 5,100 children were placed in foster care after their parents were deported or detained. A smaller but unknown number of those children have been put up for adoption by American families.
Today, according to ABC, Encarnacion Bail Romero, who has not seen her son in more than four years, has only a tiny passport photo of the boy she still calls Carlito and weeps when she speaks of him. For his part, Navarro thanks those who are supporting him and said he hopes to live for his 3-year-old daughter’s sake.
But don’t expect any tears from the people at FAIR. As they’ve made abundantly clear over the decades, humanitarian sympathy or even simple concern for their fellow human beings has no part at all in their heartless ideology.

Summary: The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) has never been a pleasant organization. Its top leaders have warned shrilly of a “Latin onslaught,” defended a racist 1924 quota system, insisted that America needs a “European-American majority,” and fretted that Latinos are “outbreeding” white people. Its founder has sought ways to sterilize unmarried mothers, corresponded with white supremacists and Holocaust deniers, and suggested, among other things, that it might be a good thing to…


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
White Nationalist State Department Official Surfaces in Photographs
August 09, 2019
Michael Edison Hayden
Hatewatch has obtained images of Matthew Q. Gebert, a State Department official who is involved in the white nationalist movement.


Hatewatch

White supremacists are finding new homes on Russian social media; black transgender people face the more discrimination; the neo-Nazis at Daily Stormer want to make Papa John’s the official pizza of the alt-right, and more.


Hatewatch

Last June, six months after paying a visit to the occupiers of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Washington State Representative Matt Shea organized a chapter of the anti-Muslim hate group ACT For America in Spokane, Washington.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 1/18/2017
January 18, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
New project aims to document hate crimes; Right-wing media lashes out at Manning;  RT host exposed as neo-Nazi; and more.


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A Kansas man is in jail on murder and attempted murder charges after allegedly shouting “get out of my country” and racial slurs before firing a handgun Wednesday evening in a crowded sports bar in suburb of Kansas City.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Alt-Right Event in Seattle Devolves Into Chaos and Violence Outside, Truth-Twisting Inside
January 23, 2017
David Neiwert
Antifascist protester shot by Trump supporter amid mass counterprotest on UW campus, but Yiannopoulos spins a tale of martyrdom to his audience at end of speaking tour.


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