New Report Examines 'Tea Party Nationalism,' Charts Extremist Ties

Back in July, the NAACP publicly called upon Tea Party leaders to repudiate extremists and racist individuals within their ranks. Although the presence of such elements in Tea Party circles had been evident for some time, movement figures tended to be dismissive and defensive in their response.
Such denials may be a little harder to make following today’s release of “Tea Party Nationalism: A Critical Examination of the Tea Party Movement and the Size, Scope, and Focus of Its National Factions.” The report, published by the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, is the first in-depth analysis of the main Tea Party groups and their various connections to extremist groups and individuals with past and present activities in hate groups. The full report is available at teapartynationalism.com , with running updates to follow.
“Tea Party Nationalism” examines the leaderships, histories, and activities of six national organizational networks at the core of the Tea Party movement: FreedomWorks Tea Party, 1776 Tea Party, Tea Party Nation, Tea Party Patriots, ResistNet, and Tea Party Express. In each case, with the exception of FreedomWorks, the authors found associations between Tea Party organizations and extremists spanning from anti-immigration activists to militia leaders to white nationalists. Groups with known anti-Semitic agendas come up often and prominently in the report’s 94 pages, which also catalog numerous vitriolic attacks by Tea Party members using anti-Muslim and Islamophobic rhetoric.
The report names several figures whose histories of hate speech or associations with hate organizations have been documented by the Southern Poverty Law Center , including Rosanna Pulido , associated with ResistNet; Dale Robertson , founder of the 1776 Tea Party and TeaParty.org; Roy Beck (NumbersUSA), affiliated with Tea Party Nation, Pamela Geller , who has hosted workshops for Tea Party Patriots, and former Tea Party Express Chairman Mark Williams , who resigned from the organization in June after a series of racially volatile comments, including calling slavery “a great gig” in a satirical piece he authored, and referring to President Obama as “a Nazi, a half-white racist, a half-black racist and an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare fraud.” Also mentioned in the report are individuals with links to the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens .
The authors do not argue that all or most of Tea Party activists are explicit racists or sympathize with the ideas and goals of extremists. Rather, they argue that racist individuals and groups have been drawn to the movement from the beginning; in most cases, they are forced out of their respective groups only when their beliefs and associations result in bad press.
The authors further argue that the movement as a whole is based on “a form of American nationalism [that] does not include all Americans, and separates itself from those it regards as insufficiently ‘real Americans.’” Furthermore, “a bright white line of racism threads through this nationalism [in which] race and religion are powerful determinants of national identity [and] mark the border between ‘self’ and ‘other.’”
The diffuse Tea Party movement is irreducible to race, and it is not motivated by “a full-fledged variety of white nationalism,” conclude the authors. But it is still evolving, and in often disturbing ways.
“It is as inchoate as it is super-patriotic,” they write. “It is possibly an embryo of what it might yet become.”

Summary: Back in July, the NAACP publicly called upon Tea Party leaders to repudiate extremists and racist individuals within their ranks. Although the presence of such elements in Tea Party circles had been evident for some time, movement figures tended to be dismissive and defensive in their response. Such denials may be a little harder to make following today’s release of “Tea Party Nationalism: A Critical Examination of the Tea Party Movement and the Size, Scope, and Focus of Its National…


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

A national survey of 1,500 adults fielded by the Intelligence Project and Tulchin Research revealed that Americans understand white supremacy and other forms of racism as a threat to our society, but still struggle to connect those issues to systemic and structural racism.


Hatewatch


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

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.


Louisiana KKK Leader Pleads Guilty to Killing Recruit Who Wanted Out

The murder trial of Louisiana klansman Raymond “Chuck” Foster ended abruptly Wednesday when he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the slaying of a new recruit and was immediately sentenced to life in prison.
Foster’s plea brings an end to a case in which seven people were arrested initially and four were indicted in connection with the November 2008 shooting death of Cynthia Lynch, 43, at a remote campsite in St. Tammany Parish about 50 miles north of New Orleans.
Lynch, who lived in Tulsa, Okla., was recruited over the Internet to join the Sons of Dixie Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Foster, 45, of Bogalusa in neighboring Washington Parish, was its leader, taking the title of imperial wizard. The Sons of Dixie Knights had about 30 members at one time, but many had quit by the time Lynch was initiated, Foster’s wife, Theresa, told the SPLC's Intelligence Report last year.
After Lynch, a loner diagnosed with bipolar disorder, arrived by bus in Louisiana, she stayed at the Fosters’ home (a local sheriff’s deputy was their landlord) for a few days before the initiation ceremony at a wooded campsite nine miles to the south. That’s where she was shot and killed by Foster, who was accompanied by four men and two women who were Sons of Dixie Knights members.
In trial testimony this week, one of Foster’s co-defendants, Frankie Stafford, said that Lynch alternated between being happy, sad and angry. She was initiated at a Saturday night ceremony where robed Klan members lit torches and shouted “White Power.” But the next day, she angrily cursed Foster in a long tirade at the campsite and yelled, “I want out.” She asked to be taken to a bus so she could return home. Stafford said he turned away when Foster shoved the woman to the ground. After he heard a gunshot, he turned to see Lynch grab her neck, fall onto a nearby tent and cry for help.
Stafford said he helped clean up the crime scene but refused to help Foster cut the bullet out of Lynch’s body. After entering his plea, Foster apologized to Lynch’s mother, Virginia Lynch, who attended the trial, and asked for her forgiveness.
The murder came to light after Stafford and one of Foster's sons, Shane, drove to a convenience store and asked a clerk how they could get bloodstains out of their clothes.
Foster's co-defendants were charged with lesser crimes, and all of them entered guilty pleas earlier. Stafford, 22, is serving a four-year sentence for obstruction of justice. Danielle Jones, 25, was sentenced to a year in prison for being an accessory after the fact. Shane Foster, 22, had “cognitive deficits,” according to a court-appointed psychiatrist, and had to undergo tutoring before being declared competent to stand trial. His mother told Intelligence Report that he suffered a brain injury when he was struck by a car at age 4 and that her husband manipulated him into joining the Klan. He  pleaded guilty in March to obstruction of justice and was sentenced to three years in prison.

Summary: The murder trial of Louisiana klansman Raymond “Chuck” Foster ended abruptly Wednesday when he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the slaying of a new recruit and was immediately sentenced to life in prison. Foster’s plea brings an end to a case in which seven people were arrested initially and four were indicted in connection with the November 2008 shooting death of Cynthia Lynch, 43, at a remote campsite in St. Tammany Parish about 50 miles north of New Orleans. Lynch, who lived in…


Hatewatch

The SPLC has collected 1,372 reported bias incidents between the day after the election and February 7. These incidents were either reported directly to the SPLC via our #ReportHate intake page or collected from news reports.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 5/17/2017
May 17, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
Buchanan calls Trump critics ‘unAmerican’; Louisiana legislators defend Confederacy sites; Judy Shepard rips ADF for ‘exploiting children’; and more.


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

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 11/21/2016
November 21, 2016
Hatewatch Staff
Trump fans get out Confederate flags; 5 things to know about Flynn; Alt-right retaliates against Twitter; and more.


Strange Bedfellows See Affirmative Action in Beauty Contest

Does an ardent Jewish neo-conservative ever agree with an anti-Semite who despises neo-conservatives?
We didn’t think so, until the Miss USA contest showed that Muslim-bashing author Daniel Pipes and racist radio host James Edwards do indeed share some common ground. The men suggested on their respective blogs that 24-year-old Rima Fakih of Dearborn, Mich., captured the pageant crown on Sunday because of her Muslim religion (Pipes) or her Arab ethnicity (Edwards).
Edwards, the “Political Cesspool” host who has claimed that white women are physically superior, griped that he wasn’t surprised by Fakih’s win. “It’s pretty much a federal law now that beauty pageant winners have to be non-white,” he wrote in his Monday blog post, “and now that Arabs are the latest ‘oppressed minority,’ they’re finally getting their place at the top of the quota totem pole.”
Meanwhile, Pipes — whose resume includes posts at elite universities, a stint at the State Department, and a presidential appointment to the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace — made a remarkably similar point. In an article titled “Affirmative Action in Beauty Contests?” posted on his website Sunday, Pipes posted the names (and photos) of six Muslim women who had won pageants in America and Europe over the past five years.
“They are all attractive,” he conceded, “but this surprising frequency of Muslims winning beauty pageants makes me suspect an odd form of affirmative action. My suspicion is borne out by the selection of Anisah Rasheed as Miss A&T at North Carolina Agriculture and Technical State University.” Pipes went on to quote from an article about Rasheed’s coronation that described her tiara sitting atop her hijab, the headscarf traditionally worn by Muslim women. (None of the other Muslim contest winners in Pipes’ article were pictured wearing the hijab.)
In an update posted Monday on his website, Pipes shared three non-critical responses from readers who wrote to him about the article. They included the following item, which Pipes presented without comment: “No surprise here. Affirmative action was first applied in beauty contests for black women to win in the 1980s, then it was the turn of Latin, brown skinned women, and now it’s Muslims. That’s why most people ignore these rigged ‘events.’ They are money losers and require controversy.”
Elsewhere, however, bloggers were taken aback by Pipes’ article. David Weigel, who writes the “Right Now” blog for The Washington Post , had this response : “Wow.” A spokeswoman for the Miss USA pageant told The Daily Beast, an online publication, that she didn’t believe Fakih’s victory had “anything to do with affirmative action.” (Actually, though she’s from a Shiite family, Fakih attended Catholic schools growing up and celebrates both Muslim and Christian faiths with her family, according to The Associated Press .)
Late Monday, Pipes posted another update dismissing the outcry provoked by his blog item. “Somebody doth protest too much,” he wrote.
Pipes’ post wasn’t the only one to suggest that Fakih benefited because of her religion. “I just wonder if this whole contest is rigged,” anti-Islam blogger Debbie Schlussel wrote on Sunday. “I have a feeling that it is. Clearly, there is affirmative action for Muslim women in beauty pageants and other such ‘contests.’” In a blog post Tuesday, Schlussel called Fakih “Miss Hezbollah” and stated that “her family is chock full of top Hezbollah terrorists.”
We thank Hatewatch reader Mason Green for the tip that inspired this blog post .

Summary: Does an ardent Jewish neo-conservative ever agree with an anti-Semite who despises neo-conservatives? We didn’t think so, until the Miss USA contest showed that Muslim-bashing author Daniel Pipes and racist radio host James Edwards do indeed share some common ground. The men suggested on their respective blogs that 24-year-old Rima Fakih of Dearborn, Mich., captured the pageant crown on Sunday because of her Muslim religion (Pipes) or her Arab ethnicity (Edwards). Edwards, the “Political…


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

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

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

KrisAnne Hall, a self-described “constitutional attorney” who thinks states have the right to secede, recently addressed a neo-Confederate hate group whose goal is to create what the Civil War did not: a separate Southern nation.


Hatewatch

Following the Atlanta Forum last month, where young extremists gathered to brainstorm big ideas to move a faltering neo-Confederate movement forward, Hatewatch has obtained a letter that event attendee Michael Cushman wrote more than a decade ago to National Alliance founder William Pierce, offering his services to "the cause."


Hatewatch

Tony Perkins , the president of the anti-LGBT hate group Family Research Council , has made a career out of demonizing the LGBT community including repeatedly linking homosexuality and pedophilia, despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary.


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

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


Hatewatch

The entire racist radical right may be working to rebrand under the “Alt-Right” banner, a meme-crazed digital wing of the white nationalist movement known for online harassment campaigns. But they haven’t managed to get over the infighting and hypocrisy that has riddled the movement for decades.


Congressman’s Immigration Remarks Prompt Calls for Death, Torture

Posters on neo-Nazi forums are publicly calling for the torture and murder of Congressman Pete Stark (D-Calif.) over comments he made on June 26 during a Fremont, Calif., town hall meeting. The Youtube video of the event has gone viral among racist and anti-immigration groups.
During the meeting, Stark mocked a questioner who identified himself as a Minuteman, the loosely organized movement that is best known for holding armed border-watch patrols, by saying, “Who are you going to kill today?” When the Minuteman claimed that border security was a disaster, Stark replied: “If you knew anything about our borders, you would know that’s not the case. Our borders are quite secure, thank you.” Stark’s remarks were met with jeers from the audience.
Stark’s assertion that U.S. borders are secure has been met with violent reaction in racist circles. On the neo-Nazi Vanguard News Network forum, poster “Mike Todd” suggested the congressman be tortured to death by being “staked out along the border face up with his eyelids cut off to be eaten by ants.” In the same thread, “Fred” wrote, “Stark will have one rope reserved for him on the ‘Day of the Rope,’” a reference to a scene in the infamous race-war novel, The Turner Diaries , when “race traitors” are murdered and hung from lamp posts and trees.
“The incredible vitriol directed at Congressman Stark is really quite frightening,” said Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, which found and publicized the comments. “But these kinds of comments are not entirely limited to those on the radical right. In fact, the furious tone of many opponents of immigration has helped to unleash this kind of visceral rage.”
On Stormfront.org, which is the world’s largest racist forum and run by a former Alabama Klan leader, “EagerWarrior” wrote: “If there is any Justice in the World that ‘man’ will suffer a horrible slow death at the hands of the Mestizos he so obviously represents.”
The thread about Stark on the white supremacist political party American Third Position 's website is particularly nasty. A poster going by the name “Robert Jones,” who is described as a leader and senior moderator of the party’s forum, wrote: “Treason, may his death be protracted and his suffering severe. We do have laws for dealing with such treachery if only we can gain the political power to enforce them.” “Marcius” pitched in with “His acts can only be described as verging on treason.”
Gaining political power is what the American Third Position is all about. This past January, ATP co-founder William Daniel Johnson said that he intended to qualify “high-level people,” meaning prominent white nationalists, for campaigns on the ATP ticket in a large number of states. The party, which says it exists to represent “the political interests of White Americans,” is currently attempting to gain ballot access in California by registering the required 88,991 voters, which would allow the party to field candidates on that state’s ballot.
ATP is a relatively new group, established just this past year. But given the group's explicitly anti-immigrant platform, it establishment is part of a larger trend. Demographic change, propelled largely by immigration, is one of the major factors driving an explosion in hate groups. In 2009, the number of hate groups reached an all time high of 932, up from 602 groups in 2000. That represents a more than 50% rise in the number of such groups over the course of the last decade.

Summary: Posters on neo-Nazi forums are publicly calling for the torture and murder of Congressman Pete Stark (D-Calif.) over comments he made on June 26 during a Fremont, Calif., town hall meeting. The Youtube video of the event has gone viral among racist and anti-immigration groups. During the meeting, Stark mocked a questioner who identified himself as a Minuteman, the loosely organized movement that is best known for holding armed border-watch patrols, by saying, “Who are you going to kill today?”…


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 Headlines 8/21/2018
August 21, 2018
Hatewatch Staff
Protesters tear down ‘Silent Sam’ on UNC campus; ADF’s record of hate speaks for itself; ‘Fox & Friends’ sanitizes antigovernment extremists; and more.


Hatewatch

Last week, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse was arrested in connection with the fatal shooting of two protesters and the maiming of a third on the night of Aug. 25 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Responses by local law enforcement and militia groups illustrate the disastrous assumptions that made this incident all but inevitable.


Hatewatch

The overwhelming support experienced by Donald Trump in rural red strongholds across the southeast during the 2016 election has forced League of the South (LOS) president Michael Hill to face the realization that Trump’s campaign rhetoric has eroded support for his historic platform beneath him. Meanwhile, the League has been bleeding young, educated members to “Alt-Right” white nationalism.


Hatewatch

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick joined Tony Perkins, president of the anti-LGBT hate group Family Research Council (FRC), twice in the past two weeks to promote SB6, the so-called “ Texas Privacy Act ,” a top legislative priority for Patrick during this session.


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

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.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Anti-LGBT Roundup 5/16/17
May 16, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
Below is a roundup of events and activities of anti-LGBT organizations and individuals. Groups that are considered hate groups are designated with an asterisk.


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

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 4/3/2017
April 03, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
Why anti-Semitism strikes the deepest chords; Trump lawsuit for supporters’ violence proceeds; Oregon farmers scramble to find labor; 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 12/20/2016
December 20, 2016
Hatewatch Staff
'Alt-Right' targets comedian; Tech giants refuse to aid Muslim registry; Farrakhan sees opening for black nationalism; and more.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Palin Wanted to Take Jesus to White  House, But Settled for Racist Rocker
April 21, 2017
Bill Morlin
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin says she wanted to take Jesus to a White House dinner with Donald Trump, but settled instead for ultra-conservative rockers Kid Rock and Ted Nugent.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
El Paso Shooting Suspect May Have Authored Manifesto Containing White Nationalist Talking Points
August 03, 2019
Brett Barrouquere and Hatewatch Staff
The suspect in a shooting that left 20 people dead at an El Paso Walmart may have posted and liked anti-immigrant leaning remarks on what appears to be his Twitter account.


Hatewatch


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

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
Hatewatch Headlines 11/28/2017
November 28, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
Trump drops slur on Navajo veterans; Ex-skinhead says Trump’s popularizing bigotry; Bible studies leader quickly expands administration role; and more.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 11/18/2016
November 18, 2016
Hatewatch Staff
How Stone helped Jones, Trump hook up; Flynn appears to be AG nominee; Sessions’ troubling record on civil rights; and more.


Hatewatch

A national survey of 1,500 adults fielded by the Intelligence Project and Tulchin Research revealed that Americans understand white supremacy and other forms of racism as a threat to our society, but still struggle to connect those issues to systemic and structural racism.


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.


New Leaders at Tanton’s Nativist Network, But Not New Tolerance

The Social Contract magazine, the most overtly white nationalist organ of John Tanton’s network of anti-immigrant organizations , so outdid itself with its fall 2010 edition calling for a ban on Muslim immigration that even some of its readership reacted with distaste.
The 68-page volume was packed with anti-Islamic rhetoric and featured contributions from Muslim-bashers like Stop Islamization of America founder Pam Geller ; right-wing attack dog Ann Coulter , who once called Islam a “car-burning cult,” and Stella Paul, who writes about Islam for the far-right magazine American Thinker , where she recently described President Obama as “rapper-in-chief.” It closed with an essay by K.C. McAlpin, who described Islam as a “hostile, intolerant, and totalitarian ideology masquerading as a religion” that “needs to be quarantined in the failed states it has already infected.”
McAlpin, who last July took a new job as a kind of successor to long-time mentor Tanton, apparently got some pushback from readers of the racist magazine — a remarkable thing, given that the journal has published such things as a special issue entitled “Europhobia: the Hostility Toward European-Descended Americans.” The issue railed against multiculturalism, arguing that it was replacing “successful Euro-American culture” with “dysfunctional Third World cultures.” The other journal principals are Wayne Lutton , a one-time member of white supremacist hate groups, and Kevin Lamb , who has written for white supremacist publications.
On Feb. 2, McAlpin posted on The Social Contract’s website a reply essay addressed to “thoughtful observers” who criticized the proposal to bar Muslims from immigrating to the U.S. (It explicitly was not addressed to “our adversaries on the far left who get a case of the vapors whenever limits on mass immigration are proposed.”) But he hardly took it back. “A ban on Muslim immigration is … a practical and necessary way to defend ourselves against the growing threat of homegrown terrorism the U.S. faces in the 21 st Century,” he wrote.
McAlpin’s posture suggested that while Tanton — in his late 70s and reportedly suffering from Parkinson’s disease — may be fading from the scene, his radicalism is not. McAlpin is a long-time acolyte of Tanton’s, and until July headed a nativist group called ProEnglish, which is actually a project of U.S. Inc., the funding umbrella founded and long run by Tanton. That month, he moved to Tanton’s home state of Michigan to take over U.S. Inc., suggesting that he is, in effect, the heir to the architect of most of the contemporary anti-immigration movement. U.S. Inc. funds The Social Contract and a large number of other nativist groups.
There’s more to suggest that Tanton is essentially withdrawing from the fray. U.S. Immigration Reform PAC, another nativist funding mechanism that was long run by his wife Mary Lou (and on whose board McAlpin sits), announced in November that James Edwards would be its new manager. (Note to regular Hatewatch readers: He is not the James Edwards who runs white supremacist Political Cesspool radio show and blog.)
Edwards, who is also a legislative consultant to NumbersUSA and a fellow at Center for Immigration Studies – both of them originally Tanton creations – once served as a staffer for the late Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), a long-time and unrepentant segregationist who fought fiercely against civil rights legislation. He has written at least one article for The Social Contract , and has been cited or quoted in many others. In 2003, he testified before a congressional committee in favor of legislation that would enable local police agencies to enforce some federal immigration laws. Testifying alongside him was Kris Kobach , then senior counsel to the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), the legal arm of the nativist Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). (FAIR was founded by John Tanton, who remains on its board today. The Southern Poverty Law Center has listed FAIR as a hate group since 2007 because of its ties to white supremacy.) Kobach and his IRLI colleagues have been instrumental in writing and defending a series of constitutionally dubious anti-immigrant laws, including last year’s notorious S.B. 1070 in Arizona.
Earlier, in 1996, McAlpin hosted an episode of FAIR’s short-lived cable talk show “Borderline” that featured far-right columnist Sam Francis (who went on to become the editorial director of the explicitly racist Council of Conservative Citizens ), along with Peter Skerry of the Brookings Institute. The topic, in McAlpin’s words, was “the relentless march against our border – is it immigration or colonization?” Predictably, Francis agreed that it was the latter. (Skerry did not, and in reward was repeatedly cut off while attempting to make his point.) In a different “Borderline” segment on “ethnic separatists,” McAlpin warned viewers that Mexicans want to reconquer the American Southwest: “This is a serious issue and a serious threat.”
ProEnglish unpersuasively masks its anti-immigration agenda with rhetoric about the importance of making English America’s official language. For instance, it opposed the DREAM Act, which would allow some undocumented youths to eventually become citizens, “because it would effectively legalize approximately 2 million illegal aliens … without specific steps requiring to prove they are English proficient.” (In fact, the act would have applied to students who had lived in the U.S. for at least five years and earned a high school diploma or equivalent – all but assuring aptitude in English). ProEnglish also opposed Puerto Rican statehood because the linguistic difference it would “endanger our nation’s unity” and “increase demands for taxpayer-funded translation and interpreter services.”
In June 2006, McAlpin and Edwards joined other far-right conservatives in signing a “Declaration opposing amnesty ‘guest worker’ proposals. ” Among the signatories were Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, antigovernment “Patriot” Tom DeWeese of the conspiracy-minded American Policy Center, and a representative of Cliff Kincaid ’s extreme-right Accuracy in Media. In 2008 and 2009, McAlpin’s ProEnglish poured $83,000 into a movement called Nashville English First that aimed to make Nashville the largest U.S. city with English as an official language. The proposal was defeated by voters in January 2009.

Summary: The Social Contract magazine, the most overtly white nationalist organ of John Tanton’s network of anti-immigrant organizations , so outdid itself with its fall 2010 edition calling for a ban on Muslim immigration that even some of its readership reacted with distaste. The 68-page volume was packed with anti-Islamic rhetoric and featured contributions from Muslim-bashers like Stop Islamization of America founder Pam Geller ; right-wing attack dog Ann Coulter , who once called Islam a…


Hatewatch

Jon Feere, a longtime staffer with the nativist think tank Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), is set to join the Department of Homeland Security in an “immigration-related position,” according to The Washington Post.


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.


Militia Figure Shawna Forde Found Guilty of Arizona Murders

Concluding a three-week trial that exposed the most unsavory side of Arizona’s militant border vigilante movement, a jury on Monday found Shawna Forde guilty of two counts of first-degree murder for the May 2009 killings of Raul Flores, 29, and his 9-year-old daughter in the border town of Arivaca, Ariz.
The jury deliberated for seven hours over two days before reaching a guilty verdict Monday. On Tuesday morning, after hearing arguments from both sides, they unanimously pronounced Forde eligible for the death penalty. They cited the facts that Forde was motivated by money, participated actively in the robbery, and intended the murders to take place as factors that warrant the ultimate punishment.
It is now up to Pima County Superior Court Judge John Leonardo, who presided over Forde’s trial, to review all the arguments and evidence and determine whether Forde should be executed or sentenced to life in prison.
Prosecutors said Forde, head of the border vigilante group Minuteman American Defense (MAD), and two accomplices – MAD Operations Director Jason Eugene "Gunny" Bush, 34, and Albert Robert Gaxiola, 42, a local MAD member – planned the May 30 home invasion because they thought they would find drugs and cash to fund their group's operation. According to prosecutors, the three broke into the victims’ trailer, where Bush shot Flores, his wife, Gina Gonzalez, and their daughter Brisenia. Gonzalez, who survived, managed to return fire with her own gun. “Oh my God,” she can be heard shouting on a 911 tape. “I can't believe they killed my family.” Bush and Gaxiola will each be tried separately this spring.
Witnesses for the prosecution painted an ugly picture of Forde. Her sister testified that Shawna used to fantasize about robbing drug cartels. (In 2009, Forde’s half-brother Merrill Metzger told a reporter that during a visit with Forde, “She sat right here on my couch and told me that she was going to start an underground militia. This militia was going to start robbing drug cartels, rob them and steal their money or drugs.”) Oin Glenn Oakstar, an Arivaca native and drug dealer who claims to have helped plan the invasion, told the jury that Forde’s trio had broken the “Arivaca Rule” that the families of rival drug dealers are off-limits in “business” killings.
Forde’s DNA was not found at the crime scene, but it was detected on a piece of jewelry stolen during the invasion. Forde’s attorney, Eric Larsen, made note of the lack of physical evidence linking his client to the scene of the double murders. He described his client as a harmless blowhard – “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” he said, quoting MacBeth .
The Tucson trial’s solemnity was marred when Forde supporter Laine Lawless , who was barred from entering court before appearing as a witness for the defense, snuck into the courtroom wearing a wig, sunglasses and dark coat. She protested to Leonardo, the judge, that she was a “citizen journalist” entitled to cover the story – before he ejected her.
Days after the trio was arrested in connection with the Arivaca murders, Bush was additionally charged with the 1997 stabbing murder of a Latino man in Wenatchee, Wash., behind a convenience store. Police said that Bush had “longstanding ties” to the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations , and Forde's half-brother told a reporter that she was trying to recruit its members to join her in robbing alleged Latino drug-runners.
Forde is a relative newcomer to the vigilante movement. She burst onto the scene in 2006, joining the Washington state chapter of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. As an organizer for the group, she gained a reputation as a manipulative, self-aggrandizing teller of tales about her own bravery. She was voted out in 2007 after attempting to grab power from state leadership.
She started MAD soon afterwards and quickly reestablished herself as a mover and shaker. That summer, she shared a podium at the Everett Elks Lodge with Minuteman Project co-founder Jim Gilchrist. By 2008, she was the Project’s border patrol coordinator, and the two worked together closely until her arrest in 2009.
Forde mingled with other border control heavies. Arizona’s Glenn Spencer , head of American Border Patrol and frequent host of nativist galas , let Forde stay on his property several times, though he contends that he barely interacted with her.
Yet Forde was not universally beloved within nativist circles. In late 2008, she made a dubious claim that members of the murderous Latino gang MS-13 had raped and stabbed her in her home. While some rushed to express their outrage at the attack, ALIPAC’s William Gheen , already leery of Forde and concerned about the damage an out-of-control border vigilante could do to the nativist movement’s credibility, put a “hold” on publicly expressing outrage while waiting for police to say more about the alleged incident. (Investigators eventually dropped the case, citing lack of evidence.) During the next six months, he and his National Illegal Immigration Boycott Coalition issued “advisories” warning their allies to stay away from Forde.
Not everyone toed the line. On Jan. 18, Rob Sanchez, a writer for Californians for Population Stabilization , posted an essay on his blog describing Forde as a “political prisoner.” He wrote that Forde could never get a fair trial in Tucson because the city’s “deranged open border advocates” want Forde to “burn at the stake regardless of innocence or guilt.”
Within days, CAPS, which in 2009 joined Gheen in warning nativists to stay away from Forde, pulled the post and replaced it with a retraction, saying that Sanchez’s piece had been “insufficiently scrutinized prior to posting” and that “CAPS in no way was taking a position of advocacy for Shawna Forde.”

Summary: Concluding a three-week trial that exposed the most unsavory side of Arizona’s militant border vigilante movement, a jury on Monday found Shawna Forde guilty of two counts of first-degree murder for the May 2009 killings of Raul Flores, 29, and his 9-year-old daughter in the border town of Arivaca, Ariz. The jury deliberated for seven hours over two days before reaching a guilty verdict Monday. On Tuesday morning, after hearing arguments from both sides, they unanimously pronounced Forde…


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.


Pamela Geller’s New Film: The Next Wave of Anti-Muslim Propaganda

Anti-Muslim zealot Pamela Geller ’s new film starts with a thud – literally. It’s the sound of a body striking a ground-level roof after plunging from lower Manhattan’s World Trade Center towers shortly after Islamic terrorists flew two jetliners into them in 2001.
Just in case that gratuitously shocking audio image wasn’t gut-wrenching enough, video clips of people leaping from the burning towers – and one striking a roof below – follow. Indeed, the greater part of Geller’s film, “The Ground Zero Mosque: Second Wave of the 9/11 Attacks,” is devoted not to making the case for its hyperbolic title, but merely stirring once again the pain, loss and outrage of the 2001 attack. The movie was screened for the first time at the Conservative Political Action Committee’s (CPAC) annual convention Saturday. The film will make its New York City premiere on Feb. 20 – Muhammad’s birthday.
The movie, produced by Geller, founder of Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), and Robert Spencer, principal of the Jihad Watch website, examines the controversy over the Park51 project – the so-called Ground Zero “mega-mosque.” Developer Sharif El-Gamal purchased the unoccupied building at 45-51 Park Place in lower Manhattan – two blocks from the World Trade Center site – in June 2009. He and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf received city approval to build a 13-story mosque and community center there.
The “seminal, ground-breaking” film (as described on SIOA’s website) is intended to cast the Park51 controversy as a critical turning point in America’s war on terror – but despite incessant yanks on the viewer’s heartstrings, the 87-minute film makes a remarkably thin case for its provocative claim that it represented “the second wave of the 9/11 attacks.” The first 35 minutes and the last 20 minutes are almost entirely devoted to an emotional recounting the horror of the 9/11 attacks – often from the viewpoint of surviving family members – and a belabored critique of the mainstream media for allegedly ignoring or slanting the mosque controversy. The half-hour in between takes a cursory, one-sided look at questions about Rauf and El-Gamal, their financing, and about their alleged connections to radical Islamic figures.
The 9/11-related emotionalism thickly embedded throughout the movie serves a clear purpose. Like Geller and Spencer themselves, the presentation blurs any distinction between radicalized Muslim fundamentalists bent on violence, and Islam itself, thereby implying that the former accurately represent more than 1.5 billion nonviolent Muslims worldwide. It further interweaves concerns about Rauf’s “insensitivity” for choosing that particular location (Geller, at one point, says she has “no problem with mosques” in general) and insinuations about the developers’ motives (which imply Geller would object to the project even if it were moved). So is the film about a single offending mosque, a dangerous radical cleric allegedly masquerading as a moderate, or generalized anti-Muslim hostility? Yes.
“On its face [the project is] a terrible idea,’ Geller says on the film. “It reveals Islam and Islamic supremacism. … If it was truly about healing, they would withdraw it. It is a supremacist act to callously dismiss the pain and the grief they’re causing. I find their dismissiveness radically intolerant.”
Adds Spencer: “We want to give a voice to [opponents of the project], and to express the frustration and the anger the American people have in the face of the mainstream media’s indifference and complicity with this effort.” The movie’s aim, Spencer said, was “pointing out what the cynical agenda of the mosque organizers really is, and how it will be understood in the Muslim world.”
Even though the site is not actually at Ground Zero, Geller says it should be considered “sacred ground” because landing gear from one of the crashed airliners fell there. Spencer goes further, stating – without any supporting evidence whatsoever – that the Park51 project would be a “celebration” of an Islamic “conquest” rivaling the greatest in history. “This will be the triumphal mosque of all triumphal mosques,” he says. “It will outdo the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, or second only to them.” (It also would evidently be the first “triumphal mosque” ever built with a swimming pool and basketball court open to the public.)
The few details presented by the film are typically offered without identifying sources, making it difficult to separate fact from opinion. Geller at one point asserts that there have been “20,000 radical Islamic attacks since 9/11,” without mentioning that all but a handful of these attacks have occurred in the embattled Middle East and that other Muslims have been the primary targets.
The crisply edited production gives so little face time to Rauf and other supporters of the community center that it is hard to avoid the term “propaganda.” On CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Rauf – an American born to an Egyptian father and Polish mother – denounces the 9/11 terrorists. “We have to wage peace. The military campaign against radical extremists from my faith community is a military campaign. The campaign for winning hearts and minds is an important part of that campaign. We know how to do it, and we’re committed to doing it. We’re ready willing and able to serve our country and serve our faith tradition. … We have condemned 9/11. I pray for the souls of your loved lost ones. If 9/11 happens ever again, I want to be the first to die. Muslims want to stand right there to say that we are here. It’s my duty as an American Muslim to stand between you, the American non-Muslims, and the radicals who are trying to attack you.” Though the “60 Minutes” clip is available on SIOA’s website, none of Rauf’s sentiments are reflected in the film.
Perhaps the sneakiest edit in the film is a clip from CNN reporter Deborah Feyerick’s interview of project developer El-Gamal. At one point, she asks him, “For those who would say, ‘This [project] is not an olive branch to greater understanding, this is more an act of defiance,’ what would you say to those people?” Geller’s film cuts off El-Gamal’s response, making it appear as if he is stumped by the question. In the full clip, El-Gamal actually pauses for a moment, then says, “This is an olive branch.”
The film’s credibility isn’t helped by several commentaries by blogger Andrew Breitbart – now infamous for having publicized secretly recorded videos of right-wing “sting” operations against the community group ACORN and Planned Parenthood, and a speech by former U.S. Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod – all of which were revealed to be strategically edited to misinform viewers about what really happened.
Late in the film, Spencer verbalizes what seems to be the real motive of the movie: arguing against any accommodation to Muslims in America: “It’s a threat that we’ve seen from many Islamic leaders in the West, that [Muslims] say that if you don’t grant us this concession, then there will be unrest, there will be anger. You will have to placate us in some other way. … And so the problem is, is that if you start on the road of accommodating shariah [Muslim religious law], if you start on the road of allowing for changes in the way that we do business or changes in the way we that operate our businesses and do our banking or the changes in the way we run our educational system or various other things … then we’re only reinforcing the principle that where Islamic law or practice and American law and practice conflict, then it’s American law and practice that have to give way, not Islamic law and practice. And once we start on that road, there is always more Islamic law to accommodate.”
Of course, that’s entirely false. Nothing in American law would, or even could, allow the use of Muslim religious law — or any other foreign system of law — in American courts. But like the film itself, that does not seem to concern the likes of Spencer and Geller, who are apparently ready to use any bludgeon that comes to hand in their jihad against the Muslim religion and those who practice it.

Summary: Anti-Muslim zealot Pamela Geller ’s new film starts with a thud – literally. It’s the sound of a body striking a ground-level roof after plunging from lower Manhattan’s World Trade Center towers shortly after Islamic terrorists flew two jetliners into them in 2001. Just in case that gratuitously shocking audio image wasn’t gut-wrenching enough, video clips of people leaping from the burning towers – and one striking a roof below – follow. Indeed, the greater part of Geller’s film, “The Ground…


Hatewatch

A member of a far-right, ultranationalist skinhead crew, the 211 Bootboys , recently avoided jail time when he plead guilty before a New York City court for his role in the politically motivated beating of two brothers.


Grammy Award Given to Jamaican Singer of Anti-Gay ‘Murder Music’

Jamaican dancehall star Buju Banton’s poisonously anti-gay lyrics have made him a target for worldwide boycotts and protests by LGBT rights activists who say his songs encourage anti-gay violence, especially among fans on the heavily homophobic Caribbean island. Despite this history of hate, the singer of what has been termed “murder music” on Sunday was awarded the 2010 Grammy for Best Reggae Album for “Before the Dawn.”
This was Banton’s fifth Grammy nomination and first win. In 2009, when he was nominated for the same award, gay-rights groups led by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) mounted furious protests and called on the Recording Academy to use the telecast of the awards ceremony to “denounce such music.” The Academy responded that it had in the past featured “a variety of political or cultural perspectives” and would continue to do so.
Ironically, the Grammy awards ceremony came one day after a new report that 28 gay Jamaicans had been granted political asylum in the United States in 2010 because they were persecuted in their native land. The Jamaica Observer said the would-be immigrants had been represented by Immigration Equality, a group of lawyers who help immigrants persecuted in their home countries because of their sexual orientation. The U.S. has recognized such persecution as a basis for seeking asylum since the 1990s, it said.
Gay rights activists say Jamaica is plagued by “murder music,” as this genre of aggressively anti-gay dancehall rhythms is called, and point out that it openly advocates anti-gay violence. “GLAAD stands by its assertion that the Recording Academy should speak out against hateful lyrics like Banton’s, and it hopes that in the future they will make better choices about who to recognize with nominations and trophies,” GLAAD spokesman Rich Ferraro told Hatewatch.
It’s no exaggeration that Banton’s lyrics are hateful. Even in the original Jamaican patois, the meaning of his most notorious anti-gay song, “ Boom Bye Bye ,” is clear enough: “Boom bye bye/Inna batty bwoy head/Rude bwoy no promote no nasty man/Dem haffi dead.” Translation: “Boom [the sound of a gun] bye-bye/In a faggot’s head/The tough young guys don’t accept fags/They have to die.”
This year’s awards competition might have been Banton’s last chance to win; this week, his trial on drug trafficking charges opened in a Miami federal courtroom. The singer is charged with conspiring to buy a shipment of cocaine from an undercover officer. If convicted, he could be sent to prison for life. He has been under house arrest for months, but was released briefly on Jan. 16 so he could perform in a concert to raise money for legal expenses.
Some of his fans believe the U.S. government or gay activists framed him. According to the AP, Banton took the opportunity to stoke his fans’ conspiracy theories and accuse his opponents of racism. “Why they want to see Buju Banton cry?” he called from the stage. “It is because I said ‘Boom Bye Bye?’ Is it because I say I Selassie I? Is it because I’m black and not shy?”
British human rights activist Peter Tatchell is the international coordinator of Stop Murder Music, a campaign with supporters worldwide who urge sponsors to pull funding from offending artists, pressure venues not to invite them, and organize boycotts and protests when they perform. Fans of Banton and other Jamaican artists “say we’re attacking these artists because they’re homophobic,” Tatchell told the Southern Poverty Law Center last summer. “That’s not true. We’re attacking them because they’re inciting the criminal offenses of violence and murder.”
In a 2004 editorial , Tatchell, who is white, rebutted charges that his campaign against Murder Music is motivated by racism. His purpose, he wrote, is “defending the rights of black gays and lesbians to live in peace, without threats to murder them. It is therefore laughable the way some sections of the black press suggest we are waging war against black music or the black community. Our targets are a tiny number of artists. Our reasons: they incite the killing of lesbians and gay men.”
Banton is not the only internationally known Jamaican performer who sings about torturing and killing gays. Beenie Man, Sizzla Kalonji, Capleton, Elephant Man and the group TOK have equally violent anti-gay songs in their repertoires. But Banton — who according to The Associated Press has had more No. 1 hits than late reggae icon Bob Marley and has collaborated with renowned Haitian singer Wyclef Jean and the punk band Rancid — sets himself apart not only with his success but with his open taunting of LGBT people and their supporters. In 2009, less than a week after sitting down with a group of San Francisco gay rights activists hoping to start a dialogue, Banton declared, “This is a fight, and as I said in one of my songs, there is no end to the war between me and faggot[s].”

Summary: Jamaican dancehall star Buju Banton’s poisonously anti-gay lyrics have made him a target for worldwide boycotts and protests by LGBT rights activists who say his songs encourage anti-gay violence, especially among fans on the heavily homophobic Caribbean island. Despite this history of hate, the singer of what has been termed “murder music” on Sunday was awarded the 2010 Grammy for Best Reggae Album for “Before the Dawn.” This was Banton’s fifth Grammy nomination and first win. In 2009, when…


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

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

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

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
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.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 5/24/2017
May 24, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
Mapping the many new factions of the far right; How the Dixie flag came to equal the swastika; Neo-Nazis try to rewrite Frank lynching history; and more.


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

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
Ex-Mayor Beth Van Duyne, Known for Anti-Sharia Crusade, Running for Congress
September 03, 2019
Hatewatch Staff
Beth Van Duyne, a former Texas mayor who stoked hysteria around an Islamic tribunal and has associated with anti-Muslim hate groups, is running for U.S. Congress.


Ammo Company Fudges Facts and Taste to Sell Its Wares

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition! When it comes to finding bargains for its subscribers, the team at WorldNetDaily , Joseph Farah’s conspiracy-mongering online publication, is never at a loss . Yesterday, in an E-mail titled “Gun Control Imminent – Stock Up Now!” they offered up a real sweetheart: “Burnin Hot Deals” from USA Ammo (motto: “Ammunition with Attitude”), which is offering a free Hat, T-Shirt, & DVD with every gift card purchase.
The ammo supplier has some useful information for those who’ve been putting off their gun purchases.
“USAAmmo.com believes tyranny is knocking down the doors of American cities daily,” the ad confides. “The recent Occupy Wall Street protests and liberal attempts at gun control are eerily reminiscent to [sic] the rise of Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot and Idi Amin. Barack Obama and Erick [sic] Holder, gun control advocates, are secretly conspiring to strip American Citizens of the right to bear arms.”
To the right of this text lies a black-and white photo of starving concentration camp survivors lying side-by-side on wooden bunks. It is labeled “Victims of Gun Control,” and links to a YouTube video titled “Stop Gun Control.”
Uploaded by “teamUSAammo,” this 4-minute acme of tastelessness begins with black-and-white stills of victims of genocides and state-sponsored mass murders from Armenia, the Soviet Union, China, Germany, Cambodia, Guatemala and Uganda, backed by a mournful a cappella rendering of a World War II-era Yiddish song (translated into English) about Jews being dragged to the Nazi death camp at Treblinka.
Two minutes in, the music switches to a riff-laden metal anthem, which backs brightly colored images of sniper rifles, bullets, and other items on offer at USAAmmo.com.
“More than 60-million defenseless citizens have been subjected to genocide and tyrannical governments. Governments render their citizens defenseless with GUN CONTROL!” it screams in giant black letters. “Liberty is perpetuated by armed citizens. An armed citizen can defend himself against threat and foe. The defenseless are subject to enslavement, imprisonment and annihilation.”
The ad ends with a plug for a US Ammo gift certificate, pictured against a background of gracefully falling bullets and the warning: “Get them something they’ll love BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!!”
The idea that Hitler was a gun control fanatic has been floating around for decades and pops up all over the far-right universe. Arguably, the man who did the most to popularize it was the late Aaron Zelman, founder of a Wisconsin-based nonprofit called Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO), which touts itself as “America’s Most Aggressive Defender of Firearms Ownership.”
Zelman’s most outrageous claim, outlined at length in his 1993 book ‘Gun Control’:  Gateway to Tyranny , was that the 1968 Gun Control Act was explicitly based on Hitler’s gun laws. Summing things up a 2009 interview with The New American , a magazine published by the far-right conspiracist John Birch Society , he said: “The author of the federal Gun Control Act, Senator Thomas Dodd, was an attorney with the U.S. Justice Department at Nuremburg. He obtained the Reichsgesetzblatt , which is the German equivalent of our Federal Register . He was able to use the German gun-control laws after giving them to the Library of Congress to translate for him. They did indeed translate the laws for him, and that was the model, the basis, for the 1968 Gun Control Act in America.”
Zelman died in 2010, but his legacy lives on. USA Ammo’s YouTube commercial, for instance, is obviously based on JPFO’s “ Genocide Chart ,” which purports to show that the state-sanctioned mass murders and genocides in Ottoman Turkey, the USSR, Nazi Germany, China (under both Chiang Kai-Shek and Mao), Guatemala, Uganda, Cambodia, and Rwanda were all caused by variations on gun control laws. Touted on the JPFO website as “The Mother of All Stats,” the chart concludes that tens of millions died as a result of gun control, not least among them the victims of Hitler’s reign.
Obviously, this is lunacy. But is there even a kernel of truth to the idea that Hitler’s gun control laws somehow allowed the Holocaust to happen?
The answer is more nuanced than a simple “no.” In 1938, one day after Kristallnacht (a state-sanctioned pogrom that led to the burning of synagogues, destruction of Jewish businesses and property, and is generally considered to have been the beginning of a new phase of anti-Jewish violence), the German government issued a decree banning Jews from “acquiring, possessing, and carrying firearms and ammunition, as well as truncheons or stabbing weapons,” and requiring those who owned such weapons to turn them in to authorities. The punishment was imprisonment.
Indisputably, then, the Nazis opposed ownership of guns by Jews. But – as hardly needs to be said – Nazis opposed Jews in general, and laws designed to disenfranchise and drive them out of Germany were implemented long before 1938,  when the genocide began in earnest.
Moreover, gun control in Germany did not begin under the Nazis. In fact, except for bans on gun ownership by Jews and other perceived enemies, experts generally agree that the Third Reich’s gun laws were overall more relaxed than those enacted under its predecessor government, the Weimar Republic.
Bernard Harcourt, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, traced the evolution of German guns laws between 1919 and 1938 in an excellent 2004 working paper, “ On Gun Registration, the NRA, Adolf Hitler, and Nazi Gun Laws: Exploding the Gun Culture Wars .” Harcourt notes that the Weimar Republic, reflecting the Treaty of Versailles’ “draconian” restrictions on weapons possession, banned gun ownership outright in 1919. Its gun laws were relaxed in 1928, but continued to require that all weapons be registered. The 1938 weapons law enacted under Hitler “represented a further liberalization of gun control regulations” [emphasis added] – deregulating the acquisition and sales of guns and ammunition, exempting entire groups from the permit requirement, lowering the age at which it was legal to own a gun from 20 to 18, and extending the validity of permits from one to three years.
“[W]ith regard to disarming the Jews, there is no dispute that the Nazis did disarm the Jews aggressively,” Harcourt concluded. But “Hitler intended to liberalize gun control laws in Germany for ‘trustworthy’ German citizens, while disarming ‘unreliable’ persons, especially opponents of National Socialism and Jews, [so] [i]t is absurd to even try to characterize this as either pro-or anti-gun control. But if forced to, it seems fair to conclude – at least preliminarily – that the Nazis were in favor of less gun control than the Weimar Republic for the ‘trustworthy’ German citizen – while disarming and engaging in a genocide of the Jewish population.”
Such realities haven’t stopped pro-gun heavyweights from playing the Hitler card. Larry Pratt , a gun rights absolutist whose Gun Owners of America (GOA) has been described as “eight lanes to the right” of the National Rifle Association, has happily endorsed the meme. Incredibly, Pratt – who was famously ejected from his position as co-chairman of Pat Buchanan’s 1996 presidential campaign for associating with professional racists and anti-Semites like the late Christian Identity minister Peter J. Peters – was pals with Zelman, appearing with him on the conspiracist Alex Jones’ Internet TV show, endorsing his books, and collaborating with him and other antigovernment “Patriots” on various projects. On the more moderate end of things, Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, has lamented the failure to address the role of gun control in the Holocaust, as has Dave Kopel, a pro-gun columnist and head of the Second Amendment Project.
Though the idea that Hitler was a gun control fanatic fits with the antigovernment Patriot agenda to recast him as a “leftist” and slot him neatly into place as an inspiration for a secret plot – possibly involving President Obama – to incarcerate ordinary Americans and implement a New World Order controlled by bankers and “elites,” the facts simply don’t fit. The Holocaust didn’t happen because Jews didn’t have guns. Jews (and others considered “enemies” of the Nazi state) didn’t have guns – or any civil or human rights – because the Nazis were systematically implementing a program aimed at exterminating them entirely.

Summary: Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition! When it comes to finding bargains for its subscribers, the team at WorldNetDaily , Joseph Farah’s conspiracy-mongering online publication, is never at a loss . Yesterday, in an E-mail titled “Gun Control Imminent – Stock Up Now!” they offered up a real sweetheart: “Burnin Hot Deals” from USA Ammo (motto: “Ammunition with Attitude”), which is offering a free Hat, T-Shirt, & DVD with every gift card purchase. The ammo supplier has some useful information…


Hatewatch

Amid ongoing protests against police brutality spurred by the recent death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, cities from Richmond to Tampa are removing divisive symbols of the Confederacy. On Monday, one angry caller told police in Birmingham, Alabama, he planned to kill police, protestors and the city mayor if they proceeded with plans to remove a monument in the city.


Sovereign Citizen Targets Supreme Court Chief Justice and FBI Director

Anti-government sovereign citizens will file frivolous paperwork against anyone – even mailing their bogus legal documents to the home of the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and the director of the FBI.
Those allegations are contained in a 17-page criminal complaint just filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle accusing Kenneth Wayne Leaming of three counts of “retaliating against a federal judge or law enforcement officer by false claim.”
Leaming -- or as he prefers to call himself “Kenneth Wayne, sovereign man” -- is affiliated with an anti-government group in Washington state calling itself “Assemblies of the County,” charging documents say.  He also was a “county ranger,” part of the so-called law enforcement arm of the “assemblies.” Other members of that sovereign citizens group held a pseudo-legal “common law” jury trial a few months ago and acquitted of Alaska militia leader Francis Schaeffer Cox of federal weapons violations. He remains in custody, awaiting federal trial in Anchorage.
Leaming, a felon, was arrested last week by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force at his home in western Washington. He was ordered held without bond at a detention hearing where testimony revealed seven firearms were found in his home, which likely will result in additional federal charges.
Leaming, a self-described international lawyer and “attorney-in-fact,” once partnered with David Carroll Stephensen in forming the “Civil Rights Task Force,” a sovereign citizens group which offered “business planning seminars.” That was before Stephensen was convicted in the Western District of Washington in 2005 of multiple counts of conspiracy to defraud the United States and failing to file tax returns.
Since then, while Stephensen has been in various federal prisons, Leaming has communicated with him regularly by telephone, mail and e-mail and assisted in filing fraudulent liens on his behalf, court documents alleges.  Some of that correspondence has come from American-International Business Law Inc., a business Leaming operated in Spanaway, Wash., where he lives.
Two of the “commercial liens” filed on Stephensen’s behalf in Pierce County, Wash., are for $10 million against Harley Lapin, the former director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and $20 million against Dennis R. Smith, the current warden of the Federal Correctional Institution, Phoenix, the court documents say.
Six additional liens were filed with the Pierce County Auditor against U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary M. Collier; former Assistant U.S. Attorneys William R. Cowden and Vasu B. Muthyala; former U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor; Secret Service Agent Roy Dotson; Cutler Dawson, former executive officer of the Navy Federal Credit Union, and former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters, the documents allege. The filing fees for those liens were traced to a bank account controlled by Leaming, the document says.
While under FBI surveillance on Sept. 28, Leaming mailed letters at a U.S. Post Office in Spanaway, Wash., to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, and two federal judges in Arkansas, the federal criminal complaint says.
In an e-mail sent to Stephensen in prison last May, Leaming promised to “flood” the U.S. Supreme Court with habeas corpus petitions, “one to each justice and re-send the one to the Chief Justice (John G. Roberts Jr.) and maybe one to his kids.” “One way or another he is going to get it in his hands and I’ll start working on off duty locations for the remaining justices as well.”
Leaming claimed in the e-mail that he also had mailed legal correspondence to Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.
Later, in a monitored prison telephone conversation, Stephensen said he had been placed in segregation, and he blamed that on the paperwork he sent to the Supreme Court justices.
Stephensen also said the petitions to the Supreme Court would “put the judges” on the spot to provide proof of their authority. He then warned if “they don’t straighten up soon,” Leaming would “have a little liability correspondence” with Attorney General Eric Holder, later adding that “someone has suggested we go after body odor in the White House.”
Later, the court documents say, Stephensen remarked that he “doesn’t like the business of politicians sending their soldiers to war for their own profit and gain.” To that, Leaming said not to blame politicians, but the Rothschilds, a reference to a powerful Jewish family that’s often the target of anti-Semitic tirades by racists.

Summary: Anti-government sovereign citizens will file frivolous paperwork against anyone – even mailing their bogus legal documents to the home of the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and the director of the FBI. Those allegations are contained in a 17-page criminal complaint just filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle accusing Kenneth Wayne Leaming of three counts of “retaliating against a federal judge or law enforcement officer by false claim.” Leaming -- or as he prefers to call himself…


Hatewatch

Glenn Spencer , head of vehemently anti-immigrant hate group American Border Patrol announced plans on May 24 for his annual “Flags Along the Border BBQ” at his ranch just yards from the US/Mexico border in Heritage, Arizona. Not among Spencer and assumedly other anti-immigrant activists at the shindig will be U.S. Border Patrol, said Spencer in an interview with Hatewatch this week.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Four Things to Know About Next Week's 'Patriotism Over Socialism' Rally in Arizona
April 12, 2019
Nick R. Martin
A U.S. congressman and the chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party are both listed as speakers at an event that will also be attended by multiple hate groups.


White Supremacist David Duke to be Booted from Yet Another Country

Ex-Klan leader David Duke is to be deported from Germany, where he was arrested last Friday while on his way to address a group of right-wing extremists.
In a statement obtained by the Huffington Post , German authorities say that the globetrotting white supremacist is “obliged to leave German territory without delay,” explaining that Duke is “not entitled to stay in Germany” because of a travel ban against him in an unspecified European country. This is most likely a reference to the Czech Republic, which expelled Duke in 2009 on suspicion of denying the Holocaust, a crime in that country.
Duke, who apparently spent the weekend in jail, on Monday sent a maudlin message begging his acolytes to lend a hand. “To fight this case will cost a lot of money, time and effort,” he wrote on his website. “While most of you will be getting ready for the warmth and love and friendship and family of Christmas, I will be far from home fighting the good fight.”
He closed with a plea: “Please remember me and this sacred struggle for our people at this beautiful time of year that is such an expression of our exquisite culture and values. … If you would use this link and send something right away because you are so much needed at this time.”

Summary: Ex-Klan leader David Duke is to be deported from Germany, where he was arrested last Friday while on his way to address a group of right-wing extremists. In a statement obtained by the Huffington Post , German authorities say that the globetrotting white supremacist is “obliged to leave German territory without delay,” explaining that Duke is “not entitled to stay in Germany” because of a travel ban against him in an unspecified European country. This is most likely a reference to the Czech…


Hatewatch

It should be no surprise that anti government folks seeking redress want someone besides the government to adjudicate for them. As a result, common law courts have sprung up across the United States. Many members of these courts are sovereign citizens who believe their judgments supersede federal and district court decisions, and then bring their quasi-legal activity into legitimate courts and use tactics including intimidation and paper terrorism.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 3/31/2017
March 31, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
Anti-immigration hardliners’ roots in eugenics; North Carolina strikes ‘bathroom bill’ deal; Ex-Dem senators helped advise Gaffney group; and more.


Hatewatch


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.


In Book, Pat Buchanan Thanks Karate-Chopping Racist for Research

In a few weeks, MSNBC commentator Pat Buchanan will unleash his latest book, Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? According to its Amazon.com product description , the lyrically titled screed “traces the disintegration [of America] to three historic changes: America’s loss of her cradle faith, Christianity; the moral, social, and cultural collapse that have followed from that loss; and the slow death of the people who created and ruled the nation.”
Weighty topics. Fortunately, Buchanan wasn’t alone in sussing them out. As Media Matters pointed out yesterday , in his acknowledgements, Buchanan extends “special thanks” to one Marcus Epstein, “for the invaluable assistance and untold hours he devoted to researching ideas, issues, and anecdotes.”
Epstein, a loyal acolyte who in a blog post for the white nationalist hate site VDARE (named for Virginia Dare, the first English child to be born in the New World) praised Buchanan as “the lone voice of sanity in a nation driven mad,” must be delighted. Once moderately notorious as an early associate of the ultraconservative student organization Youth for Western Civilization (YWC) , Epstein is these days much better known for his drunken assault on a black woman who happened to be passing by as he wandered the streets of Washington, D.C., in July, 2007. According to court records, Epstein was making offensive comments about non-whites and decided to express himself more dramatically by calling an African-American woman passing by a “nigger” and then attempting to karate chop her in the head. He was briefly detained by the woman’s husband, but escaped only to be taken into custody minutes later by a Secret Service officer who witnessed the altercation. He pleaded guilty in 2008 and agreed to continue mental health counseling, complete an alcohol treatment program, write a letter of apology to the victim and donate $1,000 to the United Negro College Fund.
Epstein’s arrest became public in 2009, leading the supposedly non-racist YWC (which nonetheless associates with unapologetic white nationalists like American Renaissance’s Jared Taylor , who wrote in 2005, “When blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western civilization — any kind of civilization — disappears.") to distance itself from him completely.
Fortunately, he had friends in other places. After graduating from college in 2006, the young white nationalist was hired as executive director of American Cause, a group led by Pat Buchanan and his sister Bay that seeks to “promote traditional American values.” Epstein also became executive director of Team America, a political action committee “dedicated to securing our nation’s borders”; it’s headed by Bay Buchanan and Tom Tancredo, who would later become YWC’s honorary chairman.
When news of his racist assault became public, Epstein’s conservative benefactors rushed to his defense, castigating the media for making a mountain out of a molehill. "I'm assuming that the only thing that makes [the incident] even newsworthy is the fact that it comes in the context of the Sotomayor thing," Tancredo — who a week earlier had declared that then-Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor “appeared to be a racist” — told The Denver Post . Bay Buchanan downplayed the incident, telling the Post it was “an out-of-character moment” for Epstein and that he was only kept on after agreeing to treatment. She added that Epstein would be voluntarily leaving Team America PAC later that summer.
Epstein disappeared from visible activism after that, but it’s no surprise to learn that he’s been working behind the scenes for Pat Buchanan, whose history of white nationalism is well documented. In 2002, his The Death of the West warned white Christendom against a looming demographic tipping point. (The book's message so energized former Klan leader David Duke that Duke fantasized on his own radio show last year about winning the presidency with Buchanan as his running mate.) It was in that book — edited by Sam Francis, chief ideologue of the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens — that Buchanan first began using the explicit language of white nationalism. In his footnotes to The Death of the West , the former Nixon speechwriter even cited the late William Pierce , author of the race-war novel The Turner Diaries and the founder of America's then-leading neo-Nazi group, to back up his own arguments.
His 2006 book State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America reflected racial views that veered into the extreme. White America is changing color, Buchanan argued — "one of the greatest tragedies in human history." The Mexican government is involved in a plot to take over the Southwestern United States, and parts of this country already look like the "Third World." America, despite what its founders wrote, was a nation formed not on the basis of creed but rather a homogenous ethnic culture. With its blood-and-soil nationalism and echoes of Nazi ideology, State of Emergency unapologetically reflects Buchanan's insistence on the centrality of race to the United States and its culture. "This idea of America as a creedal nation bound together not by 'blood or birth or soil' but by 'ideals' that must be taught and learned … is demonstrably false," Buchanan wrote.
In July, he defended Anders Breivik’s theories about the supposed evils of multiculturalism, writing that the Oslo terrorist, who slaughtered 77 people in July, “may be right.” He denounced New York’s passage of a law to legalize same-sex marriage in a blog post earlier the same month, waxing wistful on the virtue of prejudice and arguing that if a prejudice has withstood the centuries, there must be a good and valuable reason for it.
That a man who has unapologetically and repeatedly expressed such ideas has no problem hiring the likes of Epstein should not, then, be particularly shocking. While YWC is still struggling to maintain plausible deniability on charges of racism and must distance itself from its vile former associate, Buchanan — for reasons that aren’t entirely clear — has over decades of open bigotry accumulated a degree of gravitas which allows him to associate himself with whomever he likes. The karate-chopping racist hanging on his coattails must consider himself lucky.

Summary: In a few weeks, MSNBC commentator Pat Buchanan will unleash his latest book, Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? According to its Amazon.com product description , the lyrically titled screed “traces the disintegration [of America] to three historic changes: America’s loss of her cradle faith, Christianity; the moral, social, and cultural collapse that have followed from that loss; and the slow death of the people who created and ruled the nation.” Weighty topics.…


Homegrown Jihadists Reported Killed in U.S. Drone Strike

Two U.S. citizens who became Islamist jihadists were killed in an American drone attack in Yemen early this morning, officials in America and Yemen report. The deaths of Anwar al-Awlaki , an Amercan-born radical cleric linked to at least 15 terrorist plots, and Samir Khan , editor of Inspire, a sophisticated English-language online magazine devoted to inspiring homegrown jihadists , are being touted as a major blow to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Al Qaeda’s virulent Yemen-based arm.
Both men were profiled in the current issue of the SPLC Intelligence Report , which featured a cover story about homegrown jihadists.
Al-Awlaki, whom the New York Times describes as “perhaps the most prominent English-speaking advocate of violent jihad against the U.S,” was associated with a number of known terrorists. He is believed to have inspired the Pakistani-American who in May 2010 attempted to set off a car bomb in New York City’s Times Square, and he exchanged E-mails with alleged Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan. Two of the 9/11 hijackers met with him at his mosques in California and Virginia, according to The 9/11 Commission Report. His death, a senior military official told The New York Times this morning, is a “critically important” blow to Al Qaeda, as it “sets sense of doom for the rest of them.”
Though the 9/11 Commission entertained suspicions that he had been a secret Al Qaeda agent in the U.S. long before the attacks, Al-Awlaki, born in New Mexico to Yemeni parents in 1971, claimed to have been a nonviolent moderate until the U.S. invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. He held positions at mosques in Denver, San Diego and Falls Church, Va., before moving overseas – first to Britain in 2002, then to Yemen in 2004, where with prodding from the U.S. he was incarcerated for 18 months. It was after that period that he publicly identified with Al Qaeda and became its most inspirational figure in the recruitment of disaffected westerners.
He used the Internet to reach large global audiences with radical sermons that mix religious stories and incitement to violence, and promoted the conspiracy theory – shared by white anti-Semites like Christopher Bollyn of the conspiracist American Free Press and ex-Klansman David Duke – that Jews were behind the 9/11 attacks.
In April 2010, al-Awlaki became the first American to be placed on the CIA’s controversial “kill or capture” list. His father challenged the order in court, but a federal judge dismissed the suit, ruling the father had no standing – though the judge wrote that the suit raised “stark and perplexing questions” about using executive power to target U.S citizens. The Treasury Department froze his U.S. assets and prohibited transactions with him.
The plan to target al-Awlaki met with opposition from an unusual convergence of civil liberties and national security perspectives. Op-eds in Newsweek , The New York Times , and the conservative National Review questioned the wisdom of the decision. Salon’s Glenn Greenwald , a former lawyer, today encapsulated both concerns, arguing that U.S. has riskily turned al-Awlaki into a “martyr,” and that the cleric’s “murder” violated the Fifth Amendment (“No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law,”) and possibly the First Amendment as well. The American Civil Liberties Union today opined that the counterterrorism program under which al-Awlaki was killed “violates both U.S. and international law.”
But U.S. authorities considered him an especially dangerous terrorist recruiter because of his excellent English language skills, his familiarity with U.S. culture, and his persuasive advocacy. In April, the FBI’s assistant director for counterterrorism, Mark F. Giuliano, said that figures like Khan and Al-Awlaki represent a more serious threat than the older Al Qaeda organization, because they “understand our culture, our limitations, our security protocols, and our vulnerabilities.” Their ability to exploit social media also makes them particularly dangerous. “They realize the importance and value of reaching English speaking audiences and are using the group’s marketing skills to inspire individual attacks within the homeland,” Giuliano said. “In many cases they are attempting to provide them with the knowledge to do so, without having to travel or train abroad.”
Samir Khan, the other U.S. citizen to die in the drone attack, began promoting violent jihad in 2005 while still a teen living with his parents in Charlotte, N.C. His first blog, “InshallahShaheed,” offered translations of anti-U.S. screeds and links to secret websites where readers could obtain what The New York Times called “the latest blood-drenched insurgent videos from Iraq.” He moved to Yemen in 2009, and launched Inspire, which has featured instructional articles like “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom” and another describing how to use a pickup truck to “mow down the enemies of Allah.” It also has carried articles purportedly written by Osama bin Laden and al-Awlaki.
It is not known if Khan was targeted for assassination, but the Associated Press reported today, “U.S. intelligence officials have said that Khan … was not directly responsible for targeting Americans.”

Summary: Two U.S. citizens who became Islamist jihadists were killed in an American drone attack in Yemen early this morning, officials in America and Yemen report. The deaths of Anwar al-Awlaki , an Amercan-born radical cleric linked to at least 15 terrorist plots, and Samir Khan , editor of Inspire, a sophisticated English-language online magazine devoted to inspiring homegrown jihadists , are being touted as a major blow to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Al Qaeda’s virulent Yemen-based…


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.


Anti-Muslim Activist Delivers Call to 'Burn All the Mosques'

Few are as capable of such venomous anti-Muslim sentiment as John Joseph Jay, a comrade in arms with Pamela Geller and a board member of the anti-Muslim group Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA). Where others stop short of calling for violence, Jay bounds ever forward.
That was the case last week as Jay, who does not use capital letters or common punctuation in his writings, used his blog “summer patriot, winter soldier” to post a miniature manifesto ominously titled “start the revolution.” In stark and bombastic terms, Jay assailed the left for its multicultural tolerance of Muslims and proposed a host of violent solutions.
He called for the burning of every mosque in America and “tak[ing] out incumbent leadership of both parties in the congress.” He also endorsed immediately deporting every Muslim in America and burning the New York Times , the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post .
“First things first,” he wrote at the beginning of his four-point plan:
When not running his website, Jay is an SIOA board member and one of the founding members of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, an SIO sister  organization. Geller and Jay were both profiled in the Summer 2011 issue of the Intelligence Report as two of the country’s leading purveyors of anti-Muslim sentiment.
In recent months, Jay’s writings have largely focused on defending Geller from attacks. In the days after posting his manifesto, for example, Jay accused those who have tried to “tar pamela geller [sic] by her association with me” as being “utterly transparent.” Geller, he wrote, “speaks and writes the truth, and she advocate [sic] it without apology or concession (to this sort of hysterical pap), and advocates to benefit those who do good in this evil old world.”
Such worries about how some might see Geller are understandable. Geller was among the American Islamophobes admired by the terrorist Anders Breivik, who on July 22 killed 77 people, mostly teens, during a violent rampage in Norway. In his 1,500-page manifesto, titled “2083: A European Declaration of independence,” Breivik cited the writings of Geller and Robert Spencer, who runs SOIA with her, dozens of times.
Instead of distancing himself from such associations, Jay seems to have embraced the violence in his own rhetoric. “the secret is out. this is what this blog has always been about,” he wrote just days after his Sept. 26 post. “my efforts have been to establish a coherent theory in support of the individual’s right to exercise self defense against the aggressions and attacks of islam.”
Self-defense? As a post-script to his original manifesto, Jay called for a brutal end to many, many more:
“burn the editors and contributors to ‘the daily kos’ at the stake. i'll think of something suitable for hilary [sic] clinton,” he wrote. “and, throw all the living governors of new york, california, ohio, illinois, washington, florida and massachusetts into the fiery pits, from which there is no escape.”
Hyperbole? Maybe. But after this summer’s bloodbath in Norway, the most rabid Islamophobes should be careful about suggestions of violence.

Summary: Few are as capable of such venomous anti-Muslim sentiment as John Joseph Jay, a comrade in arms with Pamela Geller and a board member of the anti-Muslim group Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA). Where others stop short of calling for violence, Jay bounds ever forward. That was the case last week as Jay, who does not use capital letters or common punctuation in his writings, used his blog “summer patriot, winter soldier” to post a miniature manifesto ominously titled “start the…


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

Hatewatch
Alt-Right Blogger's Brushes With the Law Accompany His Racial Activism
May 17, 2017
David Neiwert
Jason Kessler's fight on behalf of Confederate monuments and other white racial causes seems to land him in the middle of assault charges.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
White Nationalists to Gather in Baltimore for the Ninth Annual H.L. Mencken Club Conference
November 04, 2016
Stephen Piggott
The white nationalist H.L. Mencken Club gathers tonight for its ninth annual conference.


Hatewatch

“Boogaloo Boys” – individuals associated with an online community characterized by calls for civil strife and ownership of firearms and tactical gear – have advocated for an armed revolution online and at public rallies for months. On April 11, one self-proclaimed “Boogaloo Boy” allegedly used Facebook Live to show himself attempting to murder police.


Hatewatch

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger joined Tony Perkins, president of anti-LGBTQ hate group Family Research Council (FRC), on the Sept. 9 episode of Perkins’ radio show “Washington Watch” to discuss his office’s investigation into allegations of double voting.


Hatewatch

“Alexander Slavros,” a pseudonymous Eastern European essayist and founder of the neo-fascist forum Iron March , no longer appears online under that alias – but his ideology, rooted in thoughts of violence, racial conquest and fascist purity, is spreading.


Hatewatch

Jewish institutions have been the target of intermittent bomb threats since last November. On Friday, police arrested Juan Thompson, 31 for several of them. Thompson allegedly targeted at least eight Jewish Community Centers, the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) New York office, the Jewish History Museum and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Over 90 more Jewish organizations have received threats, but law enforcement is not attributing those to Thompson.


Hatewatch

Breitbart News — a once unexceptional outlet in the right wing media constellation — became a leading voice in conservative media by 2016. Under the leadership of Stephen K. Bannon, it was an early booster of President Donald Trump’s campaign which in turn cited Breitbart more than any other source . Leaders of the white nationalist movement weren’t surprised.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Vandals Topple Headstones  in Another Jewish Cemetery
February 27, 2017
Bill Morlin
For the second time in a week, vandals with apparent anti-Semitic intent have toppled and damaged headstones in a Jewish cemetery in a major U.S. city.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Scores of Jewish Community Centers Received Bomb Threats in the Last Month
February 22, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
In just over a month, Jewish Community Centers across the country and abroad received anonymous bomb threats on five separate occasions.


Hatewatch

A national survey of 1,500 adults fielded by the Intelligence Project and Tulchin Research revealed that Americans understand white supremacy and other forms of racism as a threat to our society, but still struggle to connect those issues to systemic and structural racism.


Christian Reconstruction Group Cruises ‘Patriot’ Waters

American Vision is a hard-line Christian Reconstruction organization whose current leader, Gary DeMar, has said that democracy should be replaced by a theocratic government run by Christians who will impose Old Testament prohibitions and the occasional executions of “sodomites” to drive gay people back into the closet. It's no surprise, then, that American Vision has involved itself over the years with anti-gay and anti-abortion causes.
Lately, however, it has branched out and seems to be testing its message in the antigovernment and conspiracy-laden “Patriot” waters. Literally.
The group is co-sponsoring a January 2012 “Patriot Cruise” that will, according to a promotional webpage, transform participants' abilities to defend their faith and the country's foundations, and help them learn how to convert others who oppose "the truth by which we stand."
During the weeklong cruise aboard Royal Caribbean’s 1,020-foot Mariner of the Seas, participants will "explore what Americans really believe" in the learning environment of a "masters [sic] level teaching classroom and the energy of a Town Hall meeting." Other sponsors include the Patriot Depot (which sells anti-Obama T-shirts and other “supplies for the conservative revolution") and a Gary DeMar side project, Vision2America, which is working to "restore America to a Christian republic."
"No conference on land," American Vision claims, "will equip you for opposing the godless apologists of the liberal machine."
So far, in addition to DeMar, there are four "On Board Leaders" (other speakers to be announced). The others are Alan Keyes, former presidential candidate and birther who works with the Declaration Alliance (which supported the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps ); speaker and author Bill Federer of American Minute, who has appeared on conspiracy-monger Alex Jones' show; and Tea Party activist Victoria Jackson, once known for her six seasons on Saturday Night Live but currently known for her anti-gay, anti-Muslim and anti-liberal slams; and birther Gary Kreep , a former national board member for Young Americans for Freedom. Kreep also lists himself as unpaid general counsel to the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. The MCDC closed down in March 2010, though its website remains.
Can't make the cruise and need a Patriot fix? The American Vision store carries the Patriot-friendly tract Gateway to Liberty: The Constitutional Power of the Tenth Amendment , as well as a 2011 Firearms Guide and another guide called Disaster Prep 101 . You can also pick up some copies of the young adult novels The Drums of War , a series about the Revolutionary War.
American Vision is also tailoring its Christian Reconstructionist rhetoric to more Patriot and Tea Party-sounding calls to "restore America." Its website currently posts a "County Rights" project, a series of articles by research director Joel McDurmon (soon to be available in video and book) that tell readers how to "restore freedom" by taking control of local (i.e. county) governments and establishing the kind of community that reflects their values.
In one article, titled "State's Rights: How to Get Freedom Back," McDurmon gives a shout-out (but is quick to claim it's not an endorsement) to the Tenth Amendment Center (TAC), a driving force behind so-called "nullification" movements to undo or weaken federal laws that proponents don't like. Though he claims not to endorse the TAC, he nevertheless lists 12 issues that the TAC is working on, including "Sheriffs First" laws against "unwarranted federal policing activities" and freedom from federal gun regulations. He calls the list "impressive" and proceeds to explain how nullification might be a strategy to undo Roe v. Wade at the state level.

Summary: American Vision is a hard-line Christian Reconstruction organization whose current leader, Gary DeMar, has said that democracy should be replaced by a theocratic government run by Christians who will impose Old Testament prohibitions and the occasional executions of “sodomites” to drive gay people back into the closet. It's no surprise, then, that American Vision has involved itself over the years with anti-gay and anti-abortion causes. Lately, however, it has branched out and seems to be…