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.


Hatewatch

Activists linked to the white nationalist hate group VDARE sought resumes to fill out White House administration jobs days after media outlets declared Donald J. Trump the winner of the 2016 election, leaked emails show.


Hatewatch

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


Hatewatch


Hatewatch

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


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Patriot Front Member Joffre Cross Charged in Houston, Faces Gun, Body Armor Charges
February 23, 2019
Brett Barrouquere
A member of the
white nationalist group Patriot Front
has been charged in Houston with being a felon in possession of a firearm and body armor.


Hatewatch

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


Hatewatch

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


Hatewatch

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.


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

“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

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


Hatewatch

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.


Newest Extreme Right Demand: Bring Back McCarthyism

Between 1950 and 1954, Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy led one of the most notorious political witch-hunts in U.S. history. Aided by the parallel activities of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade divided politicians, captivated the media, and fanned the flames of anti-Soviet zeal in early Cold War America.
By 1954, when the Senate censured him for his “inexcusable” and “reprehensible” behavior, McCarthy’s name had become synonymous with demagoguery. HUAC’s star waned soon after, and the committee was dissolved in 1975. Paranoid anti-communist organizations like the John Birch Society maintained their vigilance against the (increasingly imaginary) communist threat, but most everyone else moved on.
Until now.
“This WikiLeaks disaster is proof that we are deeply infiltrated by communists just like Senator McCarthy warned us about. … It would not shock me if [Wikileaks founder] Julian Assange SECRETLY seeks asylum in Moscow to avoid an Interpol arrest,” wrote Steve Cooper, who on Dec. 1 became one of the first of many on the far right to fulminate about the alleged Wikileaks-Communist connection. “McCarthyism is the only thing that will save us.” Assange was arrested in England Dec. 7 on a Swedish warrant in connection with a sex crimes investigation. He was denied bail and remains in custody.
Cooper, a prolific blogger and Internet radio personality who writes and broadcasts at TheConservativeMonster.com, has been working towards a full-blown exhumation of McCarthy’s legacy for some time. During a June 2009 Internet broadcast on the topic, “Did the Soviet Union stage their collapse to lower our guard?” he declared that “global tentacles of Marxism are slowly strangling this world, and people are clueless.”
The day after WikiLeaks announced its most recent document dump, Cooper bought a new domain name to link to The Conservative Monster. Its name: McCarthyismNow.com.
Cooper used a Nov. 29 essay headlined “Senator McCarthy’s Ghost is Watching: Communist Infiltration Behind the WikiLeaks Dump?” to take a swipe at President Obama, his wife and former Weather Underground member William Ayers, whom right-wing extremists have tried to tie to Obama despite their only cursory association.
“Senator McCarthy tried to warn us, but America spit in his face. Senator McCarthy was a U.S. Marine Officer and a patriot, unlike Barry, Michelle and William Ayers,” he wrote. “These leaks are right up Ayers [sic] alley. ... The communists need to be flushed out of this government like the roaches they are before they bring the entire country down, because this is their ultimate goal.”
(Ironically, McCarthy was charged with encouraging government employees to steal classified documents and turn them over to him, as well as misusing FBI documents containing top-secret national security information.)
Cooper isn’t the only far-right mouthpiece calling for a McCarthy revival.
“We are faced with the problem of U.S.-based Marxists supporting our foreign enemies. These are dangerous times for America. The Congress must re-establish a House Internal Security Committee,” opined far-right columnist Cliff Kincaid on Wednesday. (The House Committee on Un-American Activities was renamed the House Internal Security Committee in 1969 in hopes that its gravitas could be salvaged after “Yippies” Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin made a mockery of HUAC hearings in 1967 and 1968.)
Right-wing attack dog and author Ann Coulter, when she's not busy talking up hate groups , has been spreading the love for “Tail-gunner Joe” for years. “The myth of ‘McCarthyism’ is the greatest Orwellian fraud of our times. … Everything you think you know about McCarthy is a hegemonic lie,” she wrote in 2003’s Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terror. She even suggests that McCarthy is the only reason there are virtually no American communists. “Sneering at McCarthy today because the only people who call themselves Communists are harmless cranks is like sneering at the Sabin vaccine because, really, almost no one gets polio anymore.”
Then there’s Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), better known to the far right for his longstanding and baseless claim that undocumented immigrants murder enormous numbers of Americans every day and similar attacks . In an interview with RightSideNews last Monday, King said he agreed with Kincaid’s call for a resurrected HUAC-type committee. “I am often quoted as saying McCarthy was a hero for America. He was. He was right far more times than he was wrong. It is a historical fact.”
America’s favorite self-proclaimed historian of the hour has also weighed in — repeatedly. “It was Republican Senator Joe McCarthy who shined the spotlight on the Communist Party again,” Glenn Beck, the Fox News host and conspiracy theorist , told his viewers in March. “McCarthy was absolutely right. He may have used bad tactics or whatever, but he was absolutely right,” he added in June.
Three weeks later, Beck invited M. Stanton Evans, author of 2007’s Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies , to join him on his radio show, “The Glenn Beck Program.”
“[McCarthy] was right in general. There was a massive penetration of the government and … it was covered up and … he threatened that cover-up. And that is why he was isolated, demonized and destroyed,” Evans told a wide-eyed Beck. “I have something I call ‘Evans Law of Inadequate Paranoia,’ which says no matter how bad you think something is, when you look into it, it’s always worse.”
Beck ate it up. “Please, please get this book,” Beck implored his viewers. “Know the truth. The truth shall set you free.”
Turning back to Evans, he gibbered, “It is — it’s frightening. It’s frightening. But it’s the truth and here is why you need to know history, because it’s repeating itself.”
Beck was still bowled over by Evans the morning after he interviewed the author. “ Blacklisted by History . Read it,” he begged his radio audience. “I know how I’m going to end up in history. I know I’m going to be a Joseph McCarthy or somebody like that, if I even make it in history. If I do, I will be smeared and discarded.”
History should be so lucky.

Summary: Between 1950 and 1954, Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy led one of the most notorious political witch-hunts in U.S. history. Aided by the parallel activities of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade divided politicians, captivated the media, and fanned the flames of anti-Soviet zeal in early Cold War America. By 1954, when the Senate censured him for his “inexcusable” and “reprehensible” behavior, McCarthy’s name had become synonymous with…


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.


SPLC Responds to Attack by FRC, Conservative Republicans

This morning, 22 members of Congress and a large number of other conservatives signed on to a public statement attacking the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for listing several anti-gay religious right organizations as hate groups.  Published in two Washington, D.C., newspapers as a full-page ad, the statement was organized by the powerful Family Research Council (FRC) and other “pro-family organizations that are working to protect and promote natural marriage and the family.”
The statement, whose signatories included House Speaker-Designate John Boehner and the governors of Louisiana, Minnesota and Virginia, ran under the headline, “Start Debating/Stop Hating.” It accused “elements of the radical Left” of trying to “shut down informed discussion of policy issues” and decried those who attempt to suppress debate “through personal assaults that aim only to malign an opponent’s character.” The SPLC, it said, was engaging in “character assassination.”
It was a remarkable performance, given that it was precisely the maligning of entire groups of people — gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people — that caused the SPLC to list groups like the FRC. Remarkable, too, was the accusation that the SPLC was avoiding debate — in fact, the very first public discussion of the issues raised by the SPLC came in a Nov. 29 debate between the FRC’s Tony Perkins and myself on MSNBC’s “Hardball With Chris Matthews.”
Consider a few of the comments about gays and lesbians that have come from some of the groups now denouncing character assassination. The FRC, in a booklet entitled Homosexual Activists Work to Normalize Sex With Boys , has claimed that “one of the primary goals of the homosexual rights movement is to abolish all age of consent laws and to eventually recognize pedophiles as the ‘prophets’ of a new sexual order.” The American Family Association ’s Bryan Fischer wrote this year that “[h]omosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and 6 million dead Jews.” Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel , which was not listed by the SPLC but helped organize today’s newspaper ad, describes relationships between gay men as “one man violently cramming his penis into another man’s lower intestine and calling it ‘love.’” Officials of several, including the FRC, have called for criminalizing gay sex.
Almost all the religious-right groups named by the SPLC also have engaged in a particularly toxic and widespread defamation of gay men: The claim that they are essentially pedophiles who molest children at far higher rates than heterosexuals.
In fact, this became the crux of my “debate” with the FRC’s Perkins — the claim, as he put it in the very last moments of the show, that “the research is overwhelming that homosexuality poses a danger to children.” To prove this, Perkins cited an outfit called the American College of Pediatricians, which certainly sounded authoritative. But he was being less than honest, to say the least. In fact, the American College of Pediatricians is a tiny group that broke away from the real professional association — the similarly named American Academy of Pediatrics — specifically because that 60,000-member organization had endorsed gay and lesbian parenting. Perkins’ move was enough to cause Chris Matthews to run a special segment two days later that explained the difference between the academy and the so-called college.
The reality is that virtually all real researchers in the field have concluded , as did the American Psychological Association in an official statement, that “homosexual men are not more likely to sexually abuse children than heterosexual men are.”
Despite the claims made in today’s statement, the SPLC’s listings are not in any way intended to suppress these groups’ free speech. We’re not asking that these groups be silenced or punished in any way. What we are doing is calling them out for their lies. There is nothing wrong with labeling an organization a hate group based on what they say. A simple example illustrates the point: If a neo-Nazi group said all Jews are “vermin,” no one would argue with our characterizing it as a hate group.
Neither are we mounting an attack on individuals or “groups that uphold Judeo-Christian moral views,” as today’s statement suggests. In fact, as we say in our article dissecting the views of these groups, “Viewing homosexuality as unbiblical does not qualify organizations for listing as hate groups.” Instead, as we explained there, “the SPLC’s listings of these groups is based on their propagation of known falsehoods — claims about LGBT people that have been thoroughly discredited by scientific authorities — and repeated, groundless name-calling.”
Several thoughtful Christian commentators understood that clearly. Warren Throckmorton , a respected professor and past president of the American Mental Health Counselors Association, put it like this the day after my debate with Perkins: “For the most part, the reaction of defenders of the newly labeled hate groups is to avoid addressing the issues the SPLC raised, instead preferring to attack the credibility of the SPLC. Reviewing the charges leveled against the Christian groups, I think their responses are mostly unfortunate and unhelpful. The SPLC has identified some issues which are legitimate and have damaged the credibility of the groups on the list. Going forward, I hope Christians don’t rally around these groups but rather call them to accountability.” After reviewing the SPLC’s list of “10 Myths” about gays and lesbians, he wrote that “much of what is said by Christians about homosexuality is provably false and rooted in ignorance and fear.”
Another Christian website, Canyonwalker Connections , wrote: “Lies are evil.  Lies breed fear. … If we repeat the myth enough, maybe it will gain muddy traction and stick. This is what FRC and other Hate Groups do so well. They demonize the gay community. … If the church cannot police our own, perhaps God is using secular organizations to slap His children upside the head? Would not be the first time. I will stand with, beside and in front of my GLBT fellow humans to ensure that they gain equality with me. Family Research Council, you should be more concerned about where you are on God’s list of naughty or nice, sheep or goats. And Southern Poverty Law Center, I applaud you, thank you, really … thank you.”
At the end of the day, it’s hard to know if the politicians and other leaders who signed today’s anti-SPLC statement really know some of things the groups they are throwing in with support. What’s a fact is that, despite their claims, the groups have so far, without exception, failed to confront the facts of SPLC’s report.

Summary: This morning, 22 members of Congress and a large number of other conservatives signed on to a public statement attacking the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for listing several anti-gay religious right organizations as hate groups.  Published in two Washington, D.C., newspapers as a full-page ad, the statement was organized by the powerful Family Research Council (FRC) and other “pro-family organizations that are working to protect and promote natural marriage and the family.” The…


Hatewatch

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


Hatewatch

In the wake of the doxing of Mike Peinovich, the founder of the white nationalist “Alt-Right” podcast The Right Stuff (TRS), waves of criticism have followed and speculation has grown that the show is beginning to unravel.


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

“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

A sovereign citizen who recklessly drove his pickup in reverse through a Fourth of July crowd, killing one man and injuring eight other people, faces 12 years in prison following a June 19 sentencing hearing in Clinton, Tennessee.


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Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 5/12/2017
May 12, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
Muslims taking step to blunt increase in arsons; Trump names Kobach to voter-fraud panel; IRS gives white nationalists a tax break; and more.


Hatewatch

A lone gunman who open fired on Republican members of the congressional baseball team who were practicing at a field in suburban Washington, D.C., early Wednesday morning has been identified as James T. (Tom) Hodgkinson.


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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


AFA’s Fischer Doubles Down on Anti-Gay Lies

Like a desperate gambler who simply can’t make himself fold an obvious losing hand and instead increases his bet, Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association apparently has concluded that the best defense for being caught in lies is to further inflate them.
The Southern Poverty Law Center last month published “ Ten Anti-Gay Myths Debunked ,” reviewing 10 of the most common untruths put forth by anti-gay activists who operate under the banner of so-called “pro-family” organizations. Fischer on Nov. 26 responded to that article with an essay of his own, claiming that the 10 myths identified by SPLC were, in fact, 10 unequivocal truths.
The problem was, Fischer’s vaguely sourced rejoinder was packed with demonstrable fictions, including references to outdated research and research the authors themselves insist doesn’t say what Fischer and his ilk claim it says. I pointed out several of those in a response to Fischer . (During an interview with independent talk-show host David Pakman [ here and here ], who challenged Fischer with the evidence I presented, Fischer actually argued that the studies did come to the conclusions he stated – never mind what the studies’ own authors said.)
On Dec. 16, Fischer again reiterated that the SPLC’s 10 myths were, in fact, truths – using the exact same misrepresented research as in his first essay. (He even cites again Columbia University researcher Robert Spitzer , who declares in an online video that his research didn’t conclude what Fischer claims it does.) But this time, Fischer goes a step further: Now he is distorting what the SPLC wrote, evidently hoping – once again – that readers won’t check his “facts.”
Fischer also deploys a coy bit of transposition in his latest essay: We labeled several allegations of anti-gay activists as myths because there was no evidence or logic to support them. But Fischer recasts those myths as affirmative statements that we failed to prove – positions we have never taken.
For example: Regarding myth no. 4, Fischer writes, “The SPLC falsely claims that homosexuals live just as long as heterosexuals.” Not true: What we stated was that there is no research that proves, as the pro-family groups claim, that gays live substantially shorter lives than straights. It is virtually impossible to even do such a study, as there is no scientifically feasible way to know who, among all those who have died, was gay (since not all homosexuals self-identify as such). Furthermore, to the degree that HIV-AIDS has shortened the expected life spans of homosexuals overall – if it has – it is the disease that kills, not the fact of being gay. (The New York City public service ad to which Fischer refers urges condom use during sexual activity to reduce the chances of disease transmittal – advice that is just as appropriate for heterosexuals). Fischer’s logic would be akin to saying certain African populations have shorter life spans because they are African, not because they are more exposed to malaria, tuberculosis and other health dangers.
Or consider Fischer’s statement regarding myth no. 9. He states, “The SPLC falsely claims that people are born homosexual. But not even homosexual researchers claim to have found the ‘gay’ gene” – as if we ever claimed there was such a gene. We wrote, “Modern science cannot state conclusively what causes sexual orientation, but a great many studies suggest that it is the result of biological and environmental forces, not a personal ‘choice.’”
Let’s examine more of Fischer’s latest crop of distortions. Fischer wrote of myth no. 8, “The SPLC falsely claims that homosexuals are not more likely to be mentally ill or to abuse drugs and alcohol.” That, simply, is a lie – we made no such statement. We wrote, “It is true that LGBT people suffer higher rates of anxiety, depression, and depression-related illnesses and behaviors like alcohol and drug abuse than the general population.” The myth, we stated, is the notion that simply being homosexual causes these conditions – which is what many pro-family activists claim. (They imply further that all one has to do is stop being gay and the mental health issues will magically vanish.) We explained: “Studies done during the past 15 years have determined that it is the stress of being a member of a minority group in an often-hostile society – and not LGBT identity itself – that accounts for the higher levels of mental illness and drug use.”
On myth no. 6: Fischer writes, “The SPLC falsely claims that hate crime laws will not lead to the jailing of pastors and others who criticize homosexuality.” He then cites the case of a Philadelphia grandmother arrested during a gay pride event along with 10 others in October 2004 – the so-called Philadelphia 11. The facts: the 11 protestors were arrested for refusing police orders to move and acting as a threat to the peace (all charges were later dropped). Police did also file hate-crime charges against the 11 for their anti-gay comments, but these were thrown out as unconstitutional – and properly so – by the courts. Fischer’s anecdotal example essentially proves the point: As long as the First Amendment stands, it will never be legal to arrest a pastor or anyone else merely for stating their religious beliefs.
In fairness, Fischer did correct one of his earlier misstatements: He properly identified the author of a scientifically unsound and outdated study on purported harm to children of same-sex parents as Australian, not Austrian.
There is a certain tedium in constantly having to rebut the ceaseless stream of falsehoods put forth by mouthpieces like Fischer. But there is far greater danger in allowing them to stand unchallenged: the chance that a lie repeated often enough might eventually be accepted as the truth. That, evidently, is the gamble Fischer is counting on.

Summary: Like a desperate gambler who simply can’t make himself fold an obvious losing hand and instead increases his bet, Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association apparently has concluded that the best defense for being caught in lies is to further inflate them. The Southern Poverty Law Center last month published “ Ten Anti-Gay Myths Debunked ,” reviewing 10 of the most common untruths put forth by anti-gay activists who operate under the banner of so-called “pro-family” organizations.…


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

Dylann Storm Roof, indoctrinated in online hate and racism, was convicted today in Charleston, S.C., of a murderous gun rampage in 2015 that left nine people dead at a historic African-American church. The racially motivated killing spree jarred the nation.


Hatewatch

Two years after the Oath Keepers in Josephine County, Oregon, engaged in a standoff with federal agents at the Sugar Pine Mine, the leader of the chapter has broken away from the Oath Keepers, citing concerns with national leadership.


Hatewatch

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


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 3/21/2017
March 21, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
Far-right sites are part of Russia-influence investigation; Weekly list of immigrant crimes makes it debut; Militia movement takes center stage at trial; and more.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 11/22/2016
November 22, 2016
Hatewatch Staff
Americans are standing up to hate; Media sanitizing Kobach’s extremism; White nationalists march in D.C.; and more.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 11/15/2016
November 14, 2016
Hatewatch Staff
Trump ‘surprised’ by attacks on minorities; White nationalists happy about Bannon; Confederate flags at California parade; and more.


Hatewatch

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


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Minuteman organizer: volunteers want to 'shoot the taco meat'
September 20, 2005
Hatewatch Staff


Hatewatch

Texas Lieutenant Governor 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

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
WCF Verona: Where the 'Wind of Change' Marked a Sea Change in Hate Group's Strategy
April 03, 2019
Hatewatch Staff
Anti-LGBT hate group
World Congress of Families
(WCF) used its annual gathering to signal a strategy shift for gaining support for its anti-LGBTQ and anti pro-choice policies.


Hatewatch

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


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
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

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

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


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
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

On the eve of “Texas Muslim Capitol Day,” an event to encourage Muslim participation in Texas government, a state lawmaker hosted a forum focused on homeland security and featuring some of America’s most outspoken anti-Muslim activists.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Emails Confirm Miller’s Twin Obsessions: Immigrants and Crime
November 25, 2019
Michael Edison Hayden
Stephen Miller
linked immigration to violence in emails to Breitbart News – writing of crimes committed by nonwhites that “each one [is] more disturbing than the next.”


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.


Justice Keeping Blanket of Secrecy Over MLK Parade Bomb Case

The Justice Department is maintaining tight secrecy around its case against a 36-year-old white supremacist accused of planting a backpack bomb on the route of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day unity parade in Spokane, Wash.
Kevin William Harpham, who has past ties to the neo-Nazi National Alliance and made more than 1,000 postings on racist Internet sites, was indicted Tuesday, 13 days after his arrest by the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team and other agents.
If convicted of attempting to use a “weapon of mass destruction” and knowingly “receiving and possessing” an illegal explosive device, Harpham was told at his arraignment Wednesday that he could be sent to prison for life.
But just how an FBI terrorism task force and Justice Department prosecutors built their case again the former U.S. Army soldier remains a secret. There have been no other arrests and Harpham wasn’t charged with conspiracy, which would have been a clue that FBI agents were still looking for one or more additional suspects.
During his brief arraignment in Spokane before U.S. Magistrate Judge Cynthia Imbrogno, a team of deputy U.S. marshals guarded Harpham, who was kept in ankle chains.
“May I enter ‘not guilty’ pleas on your behalf?’’ the judge asked Harpham, dressed in a tan Spokane County Jail jumpsuit, as he stood beside his attorney, federal defender Roger Peven.
“Yes, please, your honor,’’ Peven responded.
“Not guilty,’’ Harpham added with a quick, firm voice.
An affidavit used to arrest Harpham on March 9 near his rural home in northeastern Washington state remained under seal Wednesday at the request of U.S. Attorney Mike Ormsby of the Eastern District of Washington. Ormsby has said the affidavit detailing the case against Harpham is being kept from the public to protect his right to a fair trial.
Prosecutors even took the unusual step of redacting the name of the “foreperson” of the 23-member federal grand jury that returned the two-count federal indictment on Tuesday. The grand jury heard federal agents and prosecutors outline their evidence against Harpham in a secret session, one day before a public probable cause hearing would have been held in open court before Judge Imbrogno.
Even Peven, Harpham’s federal defender, said after Wednesday’s arraignment that he still has no clue yet how investigators built their case against his client.
“It is somewhat unusual,’’ Peven said outside the courthouse when asked about the secrecy surrounding the case.
Now that Harpham has been indicted, Justice Department prosecutors are compelled under court “discovery” rules to begin turning over investigative files to the defense, even though public access to the information remains blocked.
Peven said he expected to receive shortly an affidavit of probable cause that outlines how Harpham was identified and then arrested. But, he said, it probably will be several days or weeks before he begins receiving FBI “302” reports detailing the investigation.
Because he knows so little about the investigation, Peven said he is still not ready to attempt to ask for a bond hearing — a move federal prosecutors likely would strongly oppose on the grounds that the defendant poses a risk to the community, if not a flight risk.
Asked to comment about the defendant’s ties to white supremacist groups, Peven said, “I really can’t at this point.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has information showing that in 2004 Harpham was a member of the National Alliance, which for decades was the preeminent neo-Nazi organization in the United States. The group went into a steep decline after the 2002 death of its founder, and today is merely a shadow of its former self.
Research by SPLC also shows that Harpham posted more than 1,000 times on the Vanguard New Network (VNN), a leading racist and anti-Semitic site. Using the pseudonym “Joe Snuffy” in 2006, Harpham posted, among other things, “I can’t wait till the day I snap.”
Harpham’s father, Cecil “Bill” Harpham of Kettle Falls, Wash., told two Spokane televisions stations that his son was caring for him in the senior Harpham’s Stevens County home and couldn’t have traveled 60 miles to Spokane to plant the improvised explosive device. But he conceded that his son had racist views and might have built the bomb.
The device was found and tragedy averted at the last minute when day-laborers found it Jan. 17 in a backpack on a downtown Spokane street corner. Police then re-routed the “MLK Unity Day” parade — which had some 1,500 participants — and a bomb squad successfully disarmed the device without substantially damaging it.
It’s widely believed that the nearly intact backpack bomb — apparently intended to be detonated with a remote control device — provided a windfall of forensic evidence, possibly including DNA, fingerprints and product samples, during days of processing at the FBI lab in Quantico, Va.
The Seattle Times , quoting an unidentified source familiar with the investigation, said the FBI linked Harpham to the bomb through DNA and the purchases of bomb components, including a remote car starter and other electronics.
Meanwhile, what’s identified as an FBI “unclassified-law enforcement sensitive” report on the Spokane backpack bomb has anonymously been posted on the Internet.
“We assess with medium confidence that the [explosive device] was designed to fire directional fragmentation similar to a single shot shotgun with buckshot or cannon with a grapeshot round,” the report says. “We likewise assess that the device was viable and could have caused personal injury or death.”
The report added: “Although the use of a radio-controlled trigger suggests the bomb maker possesses a greater degree of knowledge and skill than the typical pipe bomb builder, the device incorporated components that are commonly available in the United States and relied on techniques published in open sources.”

Summary: The Justice Department is maintaining tight secrecy around its case against a 36-year-old white supremacist accused of planting a backpack bomb on the route of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day unity parade in Spokane, Wash. Kevin William Harpham, who has past ties to the neo-Nazi National Alliance and made more than 1,000 postings on racist Internet sites, was indicted Tuesday, 13 days after his arrest by the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team and other agents. If convicted of attempting to use a “weapon…


Hatewatch

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


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 1/13/2017
January 13, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
Montana march called off; Alt-right smears Trump protesters; Day laborers targeted by anti-Latino vigilantes; and more.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Searching Sharia: Anti-Muslim Propaganda Ranks High in Google Search
March 08, 2017
Alex Amend
In 2011, the
New York Times
profiled David Yerushalmi, an anti-Muslim extremist and the go-to lawyer for the movement at large.


SPLC Testifies About Rising Anti-Muslim Sentiment

Anti-Muslim bigotry is once again on the march, thanks in large part to hate groups like Stop Islamization of America, which helped gin up nationwide hysteria last year over a planned Islamic cultural center near the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in Manhattan.
Since the controversy over the "ground zero mosque" erupted last May, we've seen a steady drumbeat of news accounts of hate crimes and bias incidents aimed at Muslims – too many to ignore. And U.S. Rep. Peter King's Islamophobic hearings almost three weeks ago on the radicalization of Muslims in America didn't help matters.
So the hearings that began today in the Senate, conducted by Sen. Dick Durbin , are a welcome development. Durbin, chair of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, announced last week that he would hold hearings "in response to the spike in anti-Muslim bigotry in the last year including Quran burnings, restrictions on mosque construction, hate crimes, hate speech and other forms of discrimination."
SPLC President Richard Cohen today submitted testimony at Durbin's invitation.
Although FBI hate crime statistics for 2010 won't be released until next fall, it appears from our monitoring of news reports that those statistics will almost certainly show a spike in hate crimes against Muslims, the second such spike since 9/11.
We've compiled a list of 156 hate crimes and bias incidents since 9/11 . About a third of those occurred within a year of the attacks of 2001. But they quickly declined and leveled off after President George W. Bush delivered a series of speeches in which he assured Americans that Muslims were not our enemies.
Now, these incidents are rising again. About one-fifth of the 156 incidents we recorded have occurred since May 2010.
That's only one indicator of the toxic atmosphere. Another is the appearance in numerous state legislatures of bills to ban the use of Islamic Shariah law in our courts. This is, of course, nothing but a political stunt designed to pander to the growing anti-Muslim sentiment. There is absolutely no danger of Shariah law invading our courts.
Another indicator: Educators are reporting the harassment of Muslim students and attempts to limit the way Islamic history and culture are taught. In Staten Island, N.Y., for example, four high school students were charged with a hate crime in October after spending more than a year bullying a Muslim classmate, occasionally beating him and calling him a terrorist. The conservative American Textbook Council has complained that textbooks don't highlight "Islamic challenges to global security," and last September, the Texas Board of Education approved a resolution to require that the state's textbooks pass the group's litmus test and not cast Islam in a favorable light.
The point is, as we have seen repeatedly in recent years, words matter. It's time, as Cohen wrote in his testimony, for our political leaders to speak out forcefully and unambiguously about this growing threat to Muslim-Americans.

Summary: Anti-Muslim bigotry is once again on the march, thanks in large part to hate groups like Stop Islamization of America, which helped gin up nationwide hysteria last year over a planned Islamic cultural center near the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in Manhattan. Since the controversy over the "ground zero mosque" erupted last May, we've seen a steady drumbeat of news accounts of hate crimes and bias incidents aimed at Muslims – too many to ignore. And U.S. Rep. Peter King's Islamophobic…


Student Group at Harvard Sponsors Anti-Gay Religious Speakers

On April 1-2, an event called “ The Social Transformation Conference: Social Transformation by the Power of God ” is scheduled to take place at Harvard University, and it's raising a few red — or perhaps crimson — flags. Sponsored by a student group, the Harvard Extension Service & Leadership Society, the conference is billed innocuously as a meeting of invited religious leaders to discuss how faith-based social transformation efforts can improve society.
But a harder look at the speakers tells another story , and the conference's own agenda notes that it has specifically targeted Harvard in an effort to bring the famous educational institution back to its Christian roots. Many of the speakers are associated with the “Seven Mountains” movement, which is a type of Christian dominionist theology . Dominionism generally calls upon Christians to establish "dominion" over every aspect of our culture and government — that is, create a kind of theocracy — and use that to create God's kingdom on Earth in order to ensure the return of Jesus Christ. Dominionism is a highly conservative and often radical-right theology whose leaders are often virulently anti-gay and anti-Muslim.
Consider some of the scheduled speakers:
The conference seems tightly tied to the Seven Mountains movement, and its website highlights a video called “Transforming the Seven Mountains of Culture.” That refers to its adherents’ desire for Christians to gain control of key areas of America life — business, government, media, arts and entertainment, education, family and religion — and extinguish secularism. One of the things that Christians must do is "expel demons" who block the path to achieving this.
Bruce Wilson, an expert who researches the intersections of religion and politics, explained to Wayne Besen in the Bay Times that in the Seven Mountains movement, “Expelling demons is a concept viewed so literally that the movement uses a process called ‘spiritual mapping,’ in which ‘homosexual sites’ are designated on maps, sometimes marked with yellow pushpins.” The Harvard conference is part of a conscious strategy aimed at mainstreaming the movement, Wilson said.
Wallnau, the Seven Mountains leader, is on the board of the Oak Initiative , founded by Rick Joyner of Morningstar Ministries. The Oak Initiative's mission is to "find and help develop principled and effective Christian leaders who can mobilize and organize a cohesive force of activated Christians." Then, they'd like to place them "on every level where government is found, from the most local to state and national levels." They'd also like to develop their own media empires and their own Christian "intelligence service" skilled at "discerning important events as they unfold" and at collecting information that is "accurate and trustworthy."
Serving alongside Walnau on the Oak Initiative board are Lou Sheldon , chairman of the virulently anti-gay Traditional Values Coalition hate group; Janet Porter , the stridently anti-gay and anti-abortion founder of Faith2Action; and Cindy Jacobs, a  "prophet" who claimed in January that the recent mass bird die-offs in Arkansas were the result of support for gay marriage and the overturning of “Don't Ask, Don't Tell,” the military's recently abrogated policy toward gay and lesbian soldiers. More recently, Jacobs said that the reason a tsunami hit Japan was because the gospel hadn't reached it, due to Japan's "direct link with the Imperial family and a direct link with the sun goddess, Amaterasu."
The Harvard Crimson , the university’s student-run paper, editorialized on March 24 against the “egregiously anti-pluralist views” of the conference speakers and said they “should not be allowed to take advantage of speaking under a Harvard banner and [allowed] the legitimacy that banner naturally affords them.” Instead, it suggested, the university “must do everything in its power to show its compassion for and extend its eternal welcome to the LGBT community.”

Summary: On April 1-2, an event called “ The Social Transformation Conference: Social Transformation by the Power of God ” is scheduled to take place at Harvard University, and it's raising a few red — or perhaps crimson — flags. Sponsored by a student group, the Harvard Extension Service & Leadership Society, the conference is billed innocuously as a meeting of invited religious leaders to discuss how faith-based social transformation efforts can improve society. But a harder look at the speakers…


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.”


Muslim-Basher Pam Geller, Fresh From Call for Censorship, to Testify to Alaska House Today

Pamela Geller , one of America’s most rabid Islamophobes and a woman who is scheduled to testify today to the Alaska House of Representatives, thinks people like her should be able to decide what news people like you get to see. And she doesn’t think you can handle news presented by Middle East-based Al Jazeera English.
Geller, writing for the right-wing Daily Caller website Saturday, offered her insight on the constitutional rights and privileges of foreign media in the U.S. market. “Al Jazeera is planning to expand into the United States, and the chattering classes are treating it as a simple free speech matter,” Geller wrote.
“Let’s not let the Islamic supremacists once again invoke the freedom of speech to kill our freedom of speech,” Geller continued. “The ruse of using freedom of speech to allow propaganda broadcasts over our airways is another stealth attack on the United States of America. The issue of the expansion of Al Jazeera into the United States can only be likened to an expansion of [Nazi propagandist Joseph] Goebbels’s media network into the U.S. at the height of World War II.”
To protect freedom of speech, in other words, Geller bizarrely suggests America should suppress certain speech and control the media. Because, after all, Al Jazeera, whose coverage of the recent uprisings in the Arab world was widely lauded because it was so much more comprehensive than that of other media, is just like the Nazis.
Remarkably, given her radical views, Geller is set to testify today on behalf of Alaska’s House Bill 88, yet another proposed state law meant to stop the purported spread of Shariah, or Islamic religious, law. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has asked the Alaska House to rescind its invitation to Geller, citing her history of hateful commentary against Muslims. Geller quickly denounced CAIR’s request, accusing it of “using freedom of speech to kill freedom of speech” — essentially recycling the same charge she levied against Al Jazeera.
Geller, the executive director of Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) — a group dedicated to the idea that all devout Muslims in America are really violent radicals plotting to dislodge the Constitution and install a Shariah-driven Islamic caliphate over the United States — seems to be reaching for new lows in her attacks on Muslims. In the past, she has called Islam “the most radical and extreme ideology on the face of the earth,” said that the only moderate Muslims are secular Muslims, and equated Muslims with “savages.” Her blog, Atlas Shrugs, has published claims that President Obama was once involved with a “crack whore,” that he does the bidding of his “Islamic overlords,” even that he is the “love child” of Malcolm X.
Still, she has generally not attacked basic American creeds, like the notion that the best ideas will rise to the top in the free marketplace of ideas, until now. The irony is that Geller, a radical even in the superheated world of professional Muslim-bashers who nevertheless manages to get plenty of press, is suggesting that America would be a better place if the government decides who can speak and who cannot — a notion that most Americans would probably find wildly un-American.
Remarkably, in response to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s listing of SIOA as a hate group, Geller wrote in February that the her organization is “dedicated only to defending the freedom of speech and legal equality for all citizens.” Her latest posting certainly seems to directly contradict that pious claim.
Al Jazeera, based in Doha, Qatar, launched Al Jazeera English (AJE) in November 2006. It has 21 bureaus, plus broadcasting centers in Washington, D.C., London and Doha. AJE claims to reach 130 million homes in 100 countries, but has had poor penetration into the American and Canadian cable and satellite markets. According to National Public Radio, however, more than half of Al Jazeera English’s online traffic is from North America. In 2008, AJE won the award for “Best 24-Hour News Program” at the Monte Carlo Television Festival in Monaco.
Geller’s latest rant was apparently inspired by Al Jazeera’s March 9 announcement that it planned to introduce a children’s programming network to North America next year – an announcement also carried on the Daily Caller website.
Geller was picking up on a theme sounded a month earlier by long-time far-right propagandist Cliff Kincaid , who denounced Al Jazeera’s aspirations in North America. “Amazingly,” he wrote, “despite the savage attack [on 9/11] against the United States, al Jazeera was able to turn the tables against Washington by portraying the United States as waging war against Islam, and not in defense of its own security.” Geller will be the featured speaker Friday in Washington, D.C., at an “emergency” conference sponsored by Kincaid’s organization, America’s Survival, entitled “Al-Jazeera, Global Jihad and the Suicide of the West.”
Geller never explains exactly how she would stop al Jazeera’s access to the U.S. media market. Send federal agents into their studios to arrest its correspondents? Try the U.S. citizens on its payroll for treason? The one remedy Geller seems unwilling to trust is the classic one — allowing Americans to make up their own minds.
Then again, Geller doesn’t seem to have much passion for the First Amendment, even for Americans. “Freedom-loving people have to listen to the Katie Courics and the Matt Lauers and all the other schmucks in the mainstream media laud the coverage of Al Jazeera, while slamming and smearing Fox News,” she complains.
It’s not much of a surprise that it was the Daily Caller that published Geller’s latest rant. The online “news” operation was launched in January 2010 by former Dick Cheney adviser Neil Patel and right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson, who told The Washington Post that “we’re not enforcing any kind of ideological orthodoxy” on the site’s writers. But that turned out to be patently untrue — in fact, the Daily Caller seems clearly to specialize in attacking people like liberal commentator Keith Olbermann and then- Washington Post blogger David Weigel. Perhaps its most ridiculous attack came this Jan. 22, when John Rossomando wrote a ludicrous piece attacking the SPLC because a piece written by Hatewatch Editor Mark Potok had been reprinted on the website of the newspaper of the Communist Party USA. Although the article had been offered free to whoever cared to print it by a nonprofit that helps market “progressive” ideas, Rossomando’s article suggested that Potok’s failure to denounce its republication by CPUSA somehow put the SPLC in bed with Communists. All in all, it was a performance worthy of Joe McCarthy.
Geller’s latest round of speaking isn’t limited to lecturing Alaska lawmakers or Cliff Kincaid’s far-right outfit on the non-existent “threat” of Shariah law. On April 9, she makes her way into the world of the antigovernment “Patriot” movement that produced so much violence in the 1990s. The San Fernando (Calif.) Valley Patriots is co-hosting the West Coast premiere of the SIOA propaganda film “The Ground Zero Mosque: The Second Wave of the 9/11 Attacks,” with co-producers Geller and Robert Spencer – with whom she co-founded SIOA – in attendance.

Summary: Pamela Geller , one of America’s most rabid Islamophobes and a woman who is scheduled to testify today to the Alaska House of Representatives, thinks people like her should be able to decide what news people like you get to see. And she doesn’t think you can handle news presented by Middle East-based Al Jazeera English. Geller, writing for the right-wing Daily Caller website Saturday, offered her insight on the constitutional rights and privileges of foreign media in the U.S. market. “Al…


Pamela Geller , one of America’s most rabid Islamophobes and a woman who is scheduled to testify today to the Alaska House of Representatives, thinks people like her should be able to decide what news people like you get to see. And she doesn’t think you can handle news presented by Middle East-based Al Jazeera English.
Geller, writing for the right-wing Daily Caller website Saturday, offered her insight on the constitutional rights and privileges of foreign media in the U.S. market. “Al Jazeera is planning to expand into the United States, and the chattering classes are treating it as a simple free speech matter,” Geller wrote.
“Let’s not let the Islamic supremacists once again invoke the freedom of speech to kill our freedom of speech,” Geller continued. “The ruse of using freedom of speech to allow propaganda broadcasts over our airways is another stealth attack on the United States of America. The issue of the expansion of Al Jazeera into the United States can only be likened to an expansion of [Nazi propagandist Joseph] Goebbels’s media network into the U.S. at the height of World War II.”
To protect freedom of speech, in other words, Geller bizarrely suggests America should suppress certain speech and control the media. Because, after all, Al Jazeera, whose coverage of the recent uprisings in the Arab world was widely lauded because it was so much more comprehensive than that of other media, is just like the Nazis.
Remarkably, given her radical views, Geller is set to testify today on behalf of Alaska’s House Bill 88, yet another proposed state law meant to stop the purported spread of Shariah, or Islamic religious, law. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has asked the Alaska House to rescind its invitation to Geller, citing her history of hateful commentary against Muslims. Geller quickly denounced CAIR’s request, accusing it of “using freedom of speech to kill freedom of speech” — essentially recycling the same charge she levied against Al Jazeera.
Geller, the executive director of Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) — a group dedicated to the idea that all devout Muslims in America are really violent radicals plotting to dislodge the Constitution and install a Shariah-driven Islamic caliphate over the United States — seems to be reaching for new lows in her attacks on Muslims. In the past, she has called Islam “the most radical and extreme ideology on the face of the earth,” said that the only moderate Muslims are secular Muslims, and equated Muslims with “savages.” Her blog, Atlas Shrugs, has published claims that President Obama was once involved with a “crack w----,” that he does the bidding of his “Islamic overlords,” even that he is the “love child” of Malcolm X.
Still, she has generally not attacked basic American creeds, like the notion that the best ideas will rise to the top in the free marketplace of ideas, until now. The irony is that Geller, a radical even in the superheated world of professional Muslim-bashers who nevertheless manages to get plenty of press, is suggesting that America would be a better place if the government decides who can speak and who cannot — a notion that most Americans would probably find wildly un-American.
Remarkably, in response to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s listing of SIOA as a hate group, Geller wrote in February that the her organization is “dedicated only to defending the freedom of speech and legal equality for all citizens.” Her latest posting certainly seems to directly contradict that pious claim.
Al Jazeera, based in Doha, Qatar, launched Al Jazeera English (AJE) in November 2006. It has 21 bureaus, plus broadcasting centers in Washington, D.C., London and Doha. AJE claims to reach 130 million homes in 100 countries, but has had poor penetration into the American and Canadian cable and satellite markets. According to National Public Radio, however, more than half of Al Jazeera English’s online traffic is from North America. In 2008, AJE won the award for “Best 24-Hour News Program” at the Monte Carlo Television Festival in Monaco.
Geller’s latest rant was apparently inspired by Al Jazeera’s March 9 announcement that it planned to introduce a children’s programming network to North America next year – an announcement also carried on the Daily Caller website.
Geller was picking up on a theme sounded a month earlier by long-time far-right propagandist Cliff Kincaid , who denounced Al Jazeera’s aspirations in North America. “Amazingly,” he wrote, “despite the savage attack [on 9/11] against the United States, al Jazeera was able to turn the tables against Washington by portraying the United States as waging war against Islam, and not in defense of its own security.” Geller will be the featured speaker Friday in Washington, D.C., at an “emergency” conference sponsored by Kincaid’s organization, America’s Survival, entitled “Al-Jazeera, Global Jihad and the Suicide of the West.”
Geller never explains exactly how she would stop al Jazeera’s access to the U.S. media market. Send federal agents into their studios to arrest its correspondents? Try the U.S. citizens on its payroll for treason? The one remedy Geller seems unwilling to trust is the classic one — allowing Americans to make up their own minds.
Then again, Geller doesn’t seem to have much passion for the First Amendment, even for Americans. “Freedom-loving people have to listen to the Katie Courics and the Matt Lauers and all the other schmucks in the mainstream media laud the coverage of Al Jazeera, while slamming and smearing Fox News,” she complains.
It’s not much of a surprise that it was the Daily Caller that published Geller’s latest rant. The online “news” operation was launched in January 2010 by former Dick Cheney adviser Neil Patel and right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson, who told The Washington Post that “we’re not enforcing any kind of ideological orthodoxy” on the site’s writers. But that turned out to be patently untrue — in fact, the Daily Caller seems clearly to specialize in attacking people like liberal commentator Keith Olbermann and then- Washington Post blogger David Weigel. Perhaps its most ridiculous attack came this Jan. 22, when John Rossomando wrote a ludicrous piece attacking the SPLC because a piece written by Hatewatch Editor Mark Potok had been reprinted on the website of the newspaper of the Communist Party USA. Although the article had been offered free to whoever cared to print it by a nonprofit that helps market “progressive” ideas, Rossomando’s article suggested that Potok’s failure to denounce its republication by CPUSA somehow put the SPLC in bed with Communists. All in all, it was a performance worthy of Joe McCarthy.
Geller’s latest round of speaking isn’t limited to lecturing Alaska lawmakers or Cliff Kincaid’s far-right outfit on the non-existent “threat” of Shariah law. On April 9, she makes her way into the world of the antigovernment “Patriot” movement that produced so much violence in the 1990s. The San Fernando (Calif.) Valley Patriots is co-hosting the West Coast premiere of the SIOA propaganda film “The Ground Zero Mosque: The Second Wave of the 9/11 Attacks,” with co-producers Geller and Robert Spencer – with whom she co-founded SIOA – in attendance.


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

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

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


Hatewatch


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

Hatewatch
White Supremacist Confesses to Killing Black Man in Indiana
October 17, 2016
Bill Morlin
A self-described white supremacist has confessed to the stabbing death of a black man in in Fort Wayne, Ind., according to media reports.


SPLC Hate Group Count Tops 1,000 as Radical Right Expansion Continues

Editor’s Note: The Southern Poverty Law Center is today releasing its annual count of groups on the American radical right and analysis. What follows is the main essay from the new issue of the Intelligence Report , the SPLC’s investigative magazine. In the story, you’ll find links to our new hate group map and additional lists of antigovernment “Patriot” groups and nativist vigilante organizations. The issue also contains my editorial and stories on Cliff Kincaid , a homophobic propagandist at the far-right Accuracy in Media group; the adoption of an Oklahoma law forbidding the use of Shariah law; a racist group’s funding of two Mississippi private academies; a white supremacist’s new novel targeting the SPLC; the National Center for Constitutional Studies and its extremist version of American history; candidates with extreme-right ideas who ran in last year’s elections; an interview with a former “esoteric Nazi,” and more. The new issue’s table of contents is here .
For the second year in a row, the radical right in America expanded explosively in 2010, driven by resentment over the changing racial demographics of the country, frustration over the government’s handling of the economy, and the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories and other demonizing propaganda aimed at various minorities. For many on the radical right, anger is focusing on President Obama, who is seen as embodying everything that’s wrong with the country.
Hate groups topped 1,000 for the first time since the Southern Poverty Law Center began counting such groups in the 1980s. Anti-immigrant vigilante groups, despite having some of the political wind taken out of their sails by the adoption of hard-line anti-immigration laws around the country, continued to rise slowly. But by far the most dramatic growth came in the antigovernment “Patriot” movement — conspiracy-minded organizations that see the federal government as their primary enemy — which gained more than 300 new groups, a jump of over 60%.
Taken together, these three strands of the radical right — the hatemongers, the nativists and the antigovernment zealots — increased from 1,753 groups in 2009 to 2,145 in 2010, a 22% rise. That followed a 2008-2009 increase of 40%.
What may be most remarkable is that this growth of right-wing extremism came even as politicians around the country, blown by gusts from the Tea Parties and other conservative formations, tacked hard to the right, co-opting many of the issues important to extremists. Last April, for instance, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed S.B. 1070, the harshest anti-immigrant law in memory, setting off a tsunami of proposals for similar laws across the country. Continuing growth of the radical right could be curtailed as a result of this shift, especially since Republicans, many of them highly conservative, recaptured the U.S. House last fall.
But despite those historic Republican gains, the early signs suggest that even as the more mainstream political right strengthens, the radical right has remained highly energized. In an 11-day period this January, a neo-Nazi was arrested headed for the Arizona border with a dozen homemade grenades; a terrorist bomb attack on a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in Spokane, Wash., was averted after police dismantled a sophisticated anti-personnel weapon; and a man who officials said had a long history of antigovernment activities was arrested outside a packed mosque in Dearborn, Mich., and charged with possessing explosives with unlawful intent. That’s in addition, the same month, to the shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, an attack that left six dead and may have had a political dimension.
It’s also clear that other kinds of radical activity are on the rise. Since the murder last May 20 of two West Memphis, Ark., police officers by two members of the so-called “sovereign citizens” movement , police from around the country have contacted the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to report what one detective in Kentucky described as a “dramatic increase” in sovereign activity. Sovereign citizens, who, like militias, are part of the larger Patriot movement, believe that the federal government has no right to tax or regulate them and, as a result, often come into conflict with police and tax authorities. Another sign of their increased activity came early this year, when the Treasury Department, in a report assessing what the IRS faces in 2011, said its biggest challenge will be the “attacks and threats against IRS employees and facilities [that] have risen steadily in recent years.”
Extremist ideas have not been limited to the radical right; already this year, state legislators have offered up a raft of proposals influenced by such ideas. In Arizona, the author of the S.B. 1070 law — a man who just became Senate president on the basis of his harshly nativist rhetoric — proposed a law this January that would allow his state to refuse to obey any federal law or regulation it cared to. In Virginia, a state legislator wants to pass a law aimed at creating an alternative currency “in the event of the destruction of the Federal Reserve System’s currency” — a longstanding fear of right-wing extremists. And in Montana, a state senator is working to pass a statute called the “Sheriffs First Act” that would require federal law enforcement to ask local sheriffs’ permission to act in their counties or face jail. All three laws are almost certainly unconstitutional, legal experts say, and they all originate in ideas that first came from ideologues of the radical right.
There also are new attempts by nativist forces to roll back birthright citizenship, which makes all children born in the U.S. citizens. Such laws have been introduced this year in Congress, and a coalition of state legislators is promising to do the same in their states. And then there’s Oklahoma, where 70% of voters last November approved a measure to forbid judges to consider Islamic law in the state’s courtrooms (see related story) — a completely groundless fear, but one pushed nonetheless by Islamophobes. Since then, lawmakers have promised to pass similar laws in Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah.
After the Giffords assassination attempt, a kind of national dialogue began about the political vitriol that increasingly passes for “mainstream” political debate. But it didn’t seem to get very far. Four days after the shooting, a campaign called the Civility Project — a two-year effort led by an evangelical conservative tied to top Republicans — said it was shutting down because of a lack of interest and furious opposition. “The worst E-mails I received about the Civility Project were from conservatives with just unbelievable language about communists and some words I wouldn’t use in this phone call,” director Mark DeMoss told The New York Times . “This political divide has become so sharp that everything is black and white, and too many conservatives can see no redeeming value in any” opponent.
A Washington Post /ABC News poll this January captured the atmosphere well. It found that 82% of Americans saw their country’s political discourse as “negative.” Even more remarkably, the poll determined that 49% thought that negative tone could or already had encouraged political violence.
Last year’s rise in hate groups (see map ) was the latest in a trend stretching all the way back to the year 2000, when the SPLC counted 602 such groups. Since then, they have risen steadily, mainly on the basis of exploiting the issue of undocumented immigration from Mexico and Central America. Last year, the number of hate groups rose to 1,002 from 932, a 7.5% increase over the previous year and a 66% rise since 2000.
At the same time, what the SPLC defines as “nativist extremist” groups — organizations that go beyond mere advocacy of restrictive immigration policy to actually confront or harass suspected immigrants or their employers — rose slightly, despite the fact that most of their key issues had been taken up by mainstream politicians (see story and list ). There were 319 such groups in 2010, up 3% from 309 in 2009.
But like the year before, it was the antigovernment Patriot groups that grew most dramatically (see list ), at least partly on the basis of furious rhetoric from the right aimed at the nation’s first black president — a man who has come to represent to at least some Americans ongoing changes in the racial makeup of the country. The Patriot groups, which had risen and fallen once before during the militia movement of the 1990s, first came roaring back in 2009, when they rose 244% to 512 from 149 a year earlier. In 2010, they rose again sharply, adding 312 new groups to reach 824, a 61% increase. The highest prior count of Patriot groups came in 1996, when the SPLC found 858.
It’s hard to predict where this volatile situation will lead. Conservatives last November made great gains and some of them are championing a surprising number of the issues pushed by the radical right — a fact that could help deflate some of the even more extreme political forces. But those GOP electoral advances also left the Congress divided and increasingly lined up against the Democratic president, which is likely to paralyze the country on such key issues as immigration reform.
What seems certain is that President Obama will continue to serve as a lightning rod for many on the political right, a man who represents both the federal government and the fact that the racial make-up of the United States is changing, something that upsets a significant number of white Americans. And that suggests that the polarized politics of this country could get worse before they get better.

Summary: Editor’s Note: The Southern Poverty Law Center is today releasing its annual count of groups on the American radical right and analysis. What follows is the main essay from the new issue of the Intelligence Report , the SPLC’s investigative magazine. In the story, you’ll find links to our new hate group map and additional lists of antigovernment “Patriot” groups and nativist vigilante organizations. The issue also contains my editorial and stories on Cliff Kincaid , a homophobic propagandist…


Hatewatch

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


Hatewatch

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


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Pro-Trump Rallies Attract Opposition, and Violence Again Ensues
March 28, 2017
David Neiwert
Just like the campaign season, post-election campaign events supporting the president have become the scene of all kinds of ugliness as counter-protesters push back.


Hatewatch

Connecticut state comptroller Kevin Lembo was correct to remove anti-LGBT hate group American Family Association (AFA) from the Connecticut State Employee Charitable Campaign for violating the state’s anti-discrimination law, the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities (CCHRO) ruled.


Far-Right African Americans Chosen to Testify to Congress on Immigration

Tomorrow, the House Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement will hold a hearing at the Rayburn House Building entitled, “Making Immigration Work for American Minorities.” On the witness list are two figures whose views of immigrants are less than charitable: Carol Swain, an African-American professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University, and Frank Morris, former head of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and a board member of the anti-immigrant hate group, Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).
Swain has some very odd views for someone selected to lecture Congress on immigration and minorities. In her 2002 book, The New White Nationalism in America , Swain argued, in essence, that America doesn’t need to reject white nationalists — people who want the U.S. to be run by and for whites. Rather, it needs to start talking to them, and taking their ideas seriously, particularly when it comes to immigration and racial preferences. In the book, Swain says that white people have been muzzled by political correctness, while African Americans are allowed “to verbally assault and slander whites with racial epithets and false charges without suffering any serious loss of respect or any financial or social damage in the public arena.”
In 2009, Swain endorsed a slick 58-minute documentary, “A Conversation About Race,” devoted to proving the thesis that racism is a bogus concept invented to oppress whites. In a blurb that was posted on the documentary’s website, Swain called the film “outstanding” and “meticulously done.” “[I]t offers people of all races a rare opportunity to engage in cross-racial dialogue,” she wrote. “I highly recommend this film for social science courses dealing with race, class, and ethnicity.” When it turned out that Swain’s much-lauded filmmaker had long posted regular comments on YouTube and a number of other websites, repeatedly describing blacks as “monkeys” and black men in particular as “EVIL monkeys [who] are DESTROYING” America, and even suggesting that a black former White House adviser be lynched, “[p]ossibly with the aid of a noose,” Swain continued to heartily recommend the film, with its “poignant” scenes, to “multicultural forums across the country.”
Lately, Swain’s big bugaboo has been immigration. In 2007, Swain published Debating Immigration , which included an essay by prominent white nationalist Peter Brimelow , who runs that anti-immigrant hate site, VDARE.com , named for the first English baby born in America. Swain later served as a paid commentator on “Lou Dobbs Tonight” before he was pushed off the air by CNN for repeatedly demonizing immigrants.
It comes as no surprise that Swain’s written testimony is harsh on immigrants. She accuses “millions of foreign-born persons” of having “openly stolen jobs, goods, and opportunities from law-abiding American citizens.” Dismissing the idea that some of the undocumented might be “good people,” Swain says, “What matters is their choice to enter the country unlawfully and thumb their noses at the laws and regulations that Congress has enacted to protect the people.” Undocumented immigrants, according to Swain, “damage our national sovereignty and standing in the world.”
Frank Morris, perhaps the most prominent African-American anti-immigrant activist of the last decade, will also be testifying at the hearing. Morris has held many positions in groups set up by John Tanton , the racist architect of the modern anti-immigrant movement. For Tanton, American culture requires “a European-American majority, and a clear one at that,” something that Tanton believes today’s Latin American immigrants are making impossible. Morris is currently on the board of directors of FAIR, where he serves alongside Tanton, who founded the group in 1979. Morris is also a board member at the Center for Immigration Studies, which was conjured up by Tanton in the 1980s and started out life as a project of FAIR.
In his written testimony, Morris is completely dismissive of those who have concerns about the increasing level of vitriol and racism — like that exhibited in Tanton’s comments about a majority-white America — in the debate over America’s immigration policies. “It is relevant to note here that charges of racism during immigration debates are always leveled toward those in favor of reduced immigration regardless of their reasons,” Morris writes. Morris is particularly incensed and calls an “error” that “privileged immigrants, including illegal alien immigrants,” whatever that means, are allowed to compare their struggles to the “Black civil rights movement.”
More recently, Morris signed on as a board member with Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR), a group devoted to blaming immigrants for environmental problems. In the last few years, key nativist groups have increasingly been taking up this strategy, which is often labeled “ greenwashing .” They have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to run full-page advertisements appealing to liberals in an array of publications. They’ve built a series of websites aimed at “progressive” environmentalists — and many of those sites are run by people who are also principals of right-wing nativist groups.
PFIR, a central actor in this greenwashing campaign, was launched in 2009 with the help of key candidates, including Morris, who tried but failed to take over the Sierra Club board in its 2004 elections. Morris and his compatriots targeted the club in an attempt to turn the organization away from its historic mission of protecting the environment and reorient it towards agitating against immigration. The candidates were all soundly defeated.

Summary: Tomorrow, the House Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement will hold a hearing at the Rayburn House Building entitled, “Making Immigration Work for American Minorities.” On the witness list are two figures whose views of immigrants are less than charitable: Carol Swain, an African-American professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University, and Frank Morris, former head of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and a board member of the anti-immigrant hate group,…


American Front Founder David Lynch Shot to Death

Early this morning, a man was killed and a woman injured in a shooting in Citrus Heights, Calif., a suburb of Sacramento. Law enforcement authorities said the man, who was shot in the head and torso, was found dead inside the home. The woman, who was shot in the leg, was taken to a local hospital for treatment. Local media reports said that two children were believed by law enforcement to have been inside the home at the time of the shooting.
Law enforcement sources have confirmed to Hatewatch that the man who was shot was David Lynch, 40, and his death is being treated as a homicide.
Lynch was a clever and charismatic racist skinhead organizer whose history of racist activism dates back to the late 1980s, when he became the eastern states coordinator for American Front, a nationwide skinhead coalition modeled after Britain's racist National Front. After American Front's power waned in the mid-1990s, Lynch lived for a time in Canada, then relocated to Sacramento, where he gradually assumed control of the Sacto Skins, one of the oldest skinhead gangs in the country.
While he maintained a strong presence in the Sacramento white supremacist subculture from the late 1990s through 2005, at one point meeting with then- National Alliance chairman William Pierce when the neo-Nazi leader visited Sacramento, Lynch for the most part limited his activities to that city alone.
Later, Lynch’s empire expanded. In 2007, law enforcement officials told the SPLC that Lynch had united skinhead crews in northern and southern California, Utah and Florida under the banner of a newly energized American Front. He had also established a United States division of Troops of Tomorrow, an international skinhead organization, and helped to launch Prison Skin, a prison outreach campaign to support and glorify incarcerated skinheads.
Skinheads and neo-Nazis from around the country are posting memorials to Lynch on Facebook. Expressing what seems to be the common sentiment, Billy Roper of White Revolution wrote: “Dave Lynch: My Friend, and one of the best men I’ve ever known, a hero of our people and our cause. We are in shock.”
No further details were immediately released about the shootings.

Summary: Early this morning, a man was killed and a woman injured in a shooting in Citrus Heights, Calif., a suburb of Sacramento. Law enforcement authorities said the man, who was shot in the head and torso, was found dead inside the home. The woman, who was shot in the leg, was taken to a local hospital for treatment. Local media reports said that two children were believed by law enforcement to have been inside the home at the time of the shooting. Law enforcement sources have confirmed to Hatewatch…


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 2/3/2017
February 03, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
Bannon’s dream an of American gulag; Miller’s Islamophobia revealed; Wildlife, land managers fear for lives; and more.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Stalking Mosques and Trading Information, Back Woods Survivalist Squad Merges Anti-Islam Fever With Militia Tactics
April 19, 2019
Brett Barrouquere
Back Woods Survivalist Squad (BWSS), a group of
Patriot movement
extremists, has been using Facebook to coordinate surveillance on mosques around the country, a Hatewatch investigation reveals.


Hatewatch

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


Hatewatch

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.


SC Pol Says ‘99%’ of Global Terrorism Comes From Muslims

Terror is only terror when Muslims are responsible, according to South Carolina state Sen. Michael Fair (R-Greenville), who recently sponsored legislation that would ban Shariah law in the state’s courts.
That much was made clear again during a Hatewatch interview with Fair Thursday, a day after he told the Think Progress blog that “99%, probably” of all terror attacks worldwide in the last three decades was carried out by Islamic groups. That estimate isn’t even close to accurate, and serves no obvious purpose but to vilify hundreds of millions of people around the globe for political ends.
Obviously, the threat from radical Islamic terror groups such as Al Qaeda is very real. But terrorism is hardly limited to Muslims. The world has endured countless acts of terrorism committed by non-Muslim perpetrators in recent decades — from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka to Basque separatists in Spain to radical-right attacks in the United States, including the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building. In the United States alone, there have been scores of other terrorist plots and attacks since that Oklahoma attack left 168 men, women and children dead. Just this March, a neo-Nazi activist was charged with attempting to use a homemade bomb to murder hundreds of Martin Luther King Day parade marchers in Spokane, Wash.
Countless experts on terrorism have pointed out the large number of non-Islamic terror conspiracies and attacks. The FBI reportedly has said that two-thirds of all terrorism between 1980 and 2001 in the United States was conducted by non-Islamic American extremists; from 2002 to 2005, a period when anti-Islamic sentiment exploded in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks, that percentage grew to 95%. Last year, FBI Director Robert Mueller testified to Congress that “home-grown and lone-wolf extremists,” including domestic jihadists, had come to constitute a threat as serious as Al Qaeda. More recently, Harper’s Magazine , citing the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said in its May 2011 issue that there had been 10 confirmed “terrorist plots against the United States perpetrated by Muslims in 2010,” while 25 came from non-Muslims.
So where did the senator from the Palmetto State come to believe that “99%” of all terrorism comes from Muslims? He said he has read enough books on the subject to make him an expert. “Jihad is an Islamic concept,” Fair told Hatewatch. “It comes from their books.” And anyway, he added, “I did not say that, I don’t think.” Reminded that his “99%” remark had been videotaped, he retreated. “Maybe I did say that, but what I thought I said was of any significance, large.”
In a bizarre moment, Fair told Hatewatch that Think Progress had misunderstood his comments. He wasn’t referring to Muslim terrorists but to “radical Islamic Middle Eastern men” — a distinction clear only to him.
Politically, it is understandable why Fair might feel comfortable painting terrorism as a purely Muslim phenomenon. In the last year, anti-Muslim sentiment has been burgeoning in the United States, where one state, Oklahoma, recently passed an anti-Shariah amendment to the state constitution (it is currently stayed by a federal judge). At least 13 other states have considered similar legislation to outlaw the use of Shariah, or Islamic religious law, in U.S. courts — even though legal experts agree that that would be impossible under the constitution. Several politicians, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, recently have bashed Muslims publicly as a way of building political support in certain quarters.
In his interview with Think Progress, Fair readily admitted his bill wouldn’t really change anything. “The bill we have is an affirmation. It would be an exclamation point behind the law. It says you will practice the law. If you need reminding, foreign law does not prevail over South Carolina law,” he said.

Summary: Terror is only terror when Muslims are responsible, according to South Carolina state Sen. Michael Fair (R-Greenville), who recently sponsored legislation that would ban Shariah law in the state’s courts. That much was made clear again during a Hatewatch interview with Fair Thursday, a day after he told the Think Progress blog that “99%, probably” of all terror attacks worldwide in the last three decades was carried out by Islamic groups. That estimate isn’t even close to accurate, and serves…


Hatewatch

Mexico has turned over to the United States a man suspected of involvement in two hate crime murders more than 17 years ago in California. The case is the first of its kind where civil rights criminal charges were filed against members of a street gang, authorities say.


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


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

Hatewatch
Record of Suspect in Anti-LGBTQ Beating Reveals Previous Hate, Criminal Activity
July 12, 2019
Hatewatch Staff
Julian Austin Calfy, a suspect in the
beating of a gay man
, served five years of a 16-year sentence for terroristic threatening and criminal possession of explosive material, Hatewatch has learned.


NumbersUSA Denies Bigotry but Promotes Holocaust Denier

Update: Hatewatch has received a response from Roy Beck, who says the groups that appeared as state and local contacts on the NumbersUSA website are not endorsed by or affiliated with his organization. His complete response is included below the post.
Roy Beck, head of the immigration-restriction group NumbersUSA , has devoted a lot of energy to showing that his organization’s mission of curbing immigrant numbers is motivated not by racism but by economic and environmental concerns.
Every page of the group’s website includes a prominent link to an essay by Beck titled “'No' to Immigrant Bashing,” which begins, “The task before the nation in setting a fair level of immigration is not about race or some vision of a homogeneous white America; it is about protecting and enhancing the United States' unique experiment in democracy for all Americans, including recent immigrants, regardless of their particular ethnicity.”
Presumably, an organization taking such a stance against racism and white nationalism would also oppose similar strains of hate.
Yet as the Center for New Community pointed out yesterday , NumbersUSA lists on its website the contact information for notorious Holocaust denier Jim Rizoli of Framingham, Mass., and his unapologetically immigrant-bashing hate group, Concerned Citizens and Friends of Illegal Immigration Law Enforcement (CCFIILE), among the “local immigration-reduction groups” that new members interested in linking in with like-minded activists in their areas should reach out to.
In the early 2000s, Rizoli and his twin brother Joe – both of whom also harbor a particular hatred for Brazilian immigrants (whom they say have “raped” their hometown) – created a raft of web pages devoted to Holocaust denial . "Burning bodies was to kill the diseases that would be spread by the dead bodies that were dropping like flies from sickness and disease, not gassings," read a Nov. 12, 2002, post attributed to Jim Rizoli. He was still at it in 2009, when he used his long-running public access cable show to encourage “open debate” about the Holocaust. (The show finally was cancelled in 2010 after violating more than 20 of the cable company’s policies.)
Beck has gone to great lengths to demonstrate that NumbersUSA’s anti-immigrant stance is not motivated by racism, and to distance himself from John Tanton , the racist architect of the modern anti-immigration movement, who helped fund and found Beck’s group.
"We do not believe that immigration policy should be used to determine any particular racial makeup of this country," Beck once wrote in a long letter to the SPLC’s Intelligence Report . He and his wife, Shirley, "have spent our entire adult lives" battling racial intolerance and ignorance,” he said, deliberately buying houses in integrated neighborhoods in Michigan, Ohio, Texas and Virginia, even volunteering their sons for a court-ordered busing program in Dallas.
He said his family had welcomed all kinds of minorities and immigrants, included undocumented ones, to their home, and he added that he had "led the forced integration of a segregated private club."
Yet Beck, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, has also long been a close associate of Tanton and has spent nearly 20 years relentlessly attacking American immigration policies. He even edited Tanton’s book The Immigration Invasion , which is so raw in its nativism that Canadian authorities banned it as hate literature.
Beck has also written for and edited Tanton’s white nationalist quarterly, The Social Contract . He was still the magazine’s Washington editor in 1998 when the journal published what may have been its most lurid edition ever, “Europhobia: The Hostility to European-Descended Americans.” In 1996, he addressed a meeting of the Council of Conservative Citizens , a white nationalist hate group that has referred to blacks as a “retrograde species of humanity.”
Beck can scrub his group’s website of evidence of such affiliations, but he can’t scrub his past, which reveals his repeated prioritization of courting bigots over his supposed commitment to egalitarianism. Given this, perhaps it is not such a surprise to find the likes of Jim Rizoli on NumbersUSA’s contact list after all.
Roy Beck's response to this post: "Thank you for the opportunity to comment on a draft list compiled by one of our staff of state and local organizations across the country that are thought to be working for immigration reductions of one kind or another. This is not a list of groups endorsed by or affiliated with NumbersUSA. Any attempt to connect NumbersUSA to any issue other than immigration reduction is in error and possibly libelous."

Summary: Update: Hatewatch has received a response from Roy Beck, who says the groups that appeared as state and local contacts on the NumbersUSA website are not endorsed by or affiliated with his organization. His complete response is included below the post. Roy Beck, head of the immigration-restriction group NumbersUSA , has devoted a lot of energy to showing that his organization’s mission of curbing immigrant numbers is motivated not by racism but by economic and environmental concerns. Every page…


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Far-right survivalist and icon of 'Patriot' movement predicts religious civil war
January 03, 2019
Hatewatch Staff
The framer of a far-right survivalist movement in the Pacific Northwest rang in the new year by warning of religious civil war.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Neo-Nazi Boasted of Murder  Plan in “Manifesto Video
May 09, 2017
Bill Morlin
A neo-Nazi who boasted he was “doing my race a favor” by killing an openly gay college instructor has been convicted of first-degree murder by a North Carolina jury.


It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World: Klan Takes on Westboro Gay-Bashers

It’s a new and twisted world when the Ku Klux Klan takes on the Westboro Baptist Church , the famously rabid anti-gay group founded by Fred Phelps in Topeka, Kan. Needless to say, most Klan groups despise gays and lesbians only slightly less than black and Jewish people.
But over Memorial Day weekend, about 10 members of a tiny Powhatan Va.-based Klan group called the Knights of the Southern Cross Soldiers of the Ku Klux Klan joined a counterprotest against Phelps' church held by about 70 people waving pro-U.S. signs. Like the other counter-protesters who came to denounce the Westboro hate group, the Klan tried to screen funeral services being held at Arlington National Cemetery from the “God Hates F---” signs that have come to define the Phelps family and its church. Phelps claims that U.S. soldiers are being killed by a God angered at America’s “f---enabling” ways.
Dennis LaBonte, the self-described imperial wizard or national leader of the Klan group, said the Phelps family should understand that it is the military that protects free speech rights — the very rights preserved by the U.S. Supreme Court in ruling in March that found the Westboro protests were protected speech. “It’s the soldier that fought and died and gave them that right,” LaBonte said.
Since 2005, the Phelps family has maintained that picketing military funerals is justified because God is punishing the nation for tolerating homosexuality. The Phelpses also have claimed that God chose to use improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, to kill soldiers because the church’s Topeka compound was once bombed with a similar device. “God is visiting the sins upon America by killing their kids with IEDs … and the more the merrier,” church founder Fred Phelps once said.
Abigail Phelps, one of Phelps’ daughters who was at the protest, told CNN that the nation it should not “idolize” the dead, especially those who died for an "unrighteous cause." As for Klan members joining the protest against Westboro and its message, Phelps said, in one of the few statements from her congregation that most Americans would agree with, “They have no moral authority on anything.”

Summary: It’s a new and twisted world when the Ku Klux Klan takes on the Westboro Baptist Church , the famously rabid anti-gay group founded by Fred Phelps in Topeka, Kan. Needless to say, most Klan groups despise gays and lesbians only slightly less than black and Jewish people. But over Memorial Day weekend, about 10 members of a tiny Powhatan Va.-based Klan group called the Knights of the Southern Cross Soldiers of the Ku Klux Klan joined a counterprotest against Phelps' church held by about 70…


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
New Black Panther for Self Defense Member Committed Suicide after Shooting Three People and Killing One
May 03, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
Shooting victims included his godfather, a paramedic and an innocent bystander.