Police: Intruders Carved Anti-Gay Slurs into Nebraska Lesbian

Editor's Note: Police subsequently said they had not ruled out the possibility that the attack was staged.
Last weekend, three men in masks stormed into a woman’s home in Nebraska, bound her wrists and ankles with zip ties, and carved anti-gay slurs into the woman’s body. The men also painted anti-gay slurs on the walls and poured gasoline on the floor to light the house on fire before fleeing, police said.
The fires went out, but firemen and paramedics rushing to the scene in Lincoln, last Sunday discovered the woman, who was a lesbian, across the street, bloody and dazed.
“She had blood streaming down her body,” Raymond Strozier, a neighbor, told the Lincoln Journal Star . “She was crying. She was shaking. She was terrified.”
The fire did little damage, but the 33-year-old woman was hospitalized. News of the attack, which came in the midst of the Star City Pride Festival, spread quickly and prompted hundreds to flood the steps of the Capitol with rainbow flags and candles for an impromptu vigil.
Social media websites also erupted with anger, prompting Karen Bratton-Cranford, president of Star City Pride, a local gay rights advocacy group, to warn those at the vigil to refrain from acts of revenge, the Journal Star reported.
“Don’t go out and act on your own,” she said. “Don’t give them the power to control your actions.”
The Lincoln Police Department has said it is treating the attack as a hate crime. But despite the far-flung interest the story has generated, investigators have been tight-lipped about the details.
No suspects have been identified.
In Oklahoma on Saturday, a gay man was seriously burned when unknown assailants threw what appeared to be an explosive device into his car.
Jon Ferguson, who lives in Oklahoma City, said he was awakened early Saturday by his car alarm and then saw a couple of people vandalizing his car. As he approached, one threw something into his Camaro, causing an explosion.
Ferguson was treated at the hospital for first- and second-degree burns to his face, arms and torso. The experience made him question his decision to come out. “It’s almost not worth being proud of who you [are] and trying to show you’re gay because stuff like this really does happen,” he said. “I’ve always seen it on the news that kids are dying and stuff because they’re being bullied, and you’re 25 years old and something like this happens to you. It’s almost not worth it, and you understand why kids don’t come out of the closet.”

Summary: Editor's Note: Police subsequently said they had not ruled out the possibility that the attack was staged. Last weekend, three men in masks stormed into a woman’s home in Nebraska, bound her wrists and ankles with zip ties, and carved anti-gay slurs into the woman’s body. The men also painted anti-gay slurs on the walls and poured gasoline on the floor to light the house on fire before fleeing, police said. The fires went out, but firemen and paramedics rushing to the scene in Lincoln, last…


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Emails Detail Miller’s Ties to Group That Touted White Nationalist Writers
November 14, 2019
Michael Edison Hayden
White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller demonstrates a connection to an anti-immigrant think tank that promoted white nationalist writers, according to emails acquired by Hatewatch.


Hatewatch


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.


Nebraska Police Not Ruling Out Hoax in Attack on Lesbian

Police investigators in Lincoln, Neb., have not ruled out the possibility that a 33-year-old lesbian allegedly attacked last weekend because of her sexual orientation might have staged the hate crime. But they’re also not ready to call her story, which has ignited interest across the country, a complete fabrication.
Chief Jim Peschong told the Lincoln Journal Star that investigators, aided by the FBI, continue to search for suspects in the case but remain uncertain whether the attack even took place.
The woman, whom Nebraska gay advocates have dubbed “Rainbow Jane,” told police that three men wearing masks stormed into her house on Sunday, tied her ankles and wrists with zip ties and used knives to carve anti-LGBT epithets into her arms and stomach.
Lincoln attorney Megan Mikolajczyk, who represents the woman, told the Omaha World-Herald on Wednesday that her client was not yet prepared to make a statement on the attack.
“My No. 1 priority is her health and safety and her emotional well-being,” Mikolajczyk said. “I don’t know when she’ll be ready.

Summary: Police investigators in Lincoln, Neb., have not ruled out the possibility that a 33-year-old lesbian allegedly attacked last weekend because of her sexual orientation might have staged the hate crime. But they’re also not ready to call her story, which has ignited interest across the country, a complete fabrication. Chief Jim Peschong told the Lincoln Journal Star that investigators, aided by the FBI, continue to search for suspects in the case but remain uncertain whether the attack even took…


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

“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

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
Hatewatch Headlines 1/6/2017
January 06, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
White nationalism filling a political vacuum; Hate crimes ease, but remain high; ‘Wall’ is now a fence, paid for by USA; and more.


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

In what may be the largest joint prosecution of sovereign citizens, authorities are bringing a 320-count criminal indictment against 10 of the antigovernment activists just arrested after a year-long investigation in Tennessee.


Hatewatch

Antigovernment extremists and militia-types looking to bash federal law enforcement just got a new drumbeat – one to replace the worn-out tropes arising from the 1990s tragedies at Ruby Ridge and Waco.


The CCC’s Kyle Rogers Makes Himself Known on Stormfront

As one of the key players in the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), Kyle Rogers has never backed down from urging politicians to stand up for whites. But in recent months, when not mugging for the camera in an ill-fitting suit, the modern face of the council has another life posting anti-Semitic tirades to the Internet’s largest white nationalist message board.
According to several anti-racist websites, including One People’s Project , Rogers regularly posts to Stormfront.org –– one of the oldest and largest racist message boards online –– under the name “Valhalla.” In one post, in fact, Rogers signs his name as “Kyle” and includes a link to his business, which sells white nationalist and racist flags.
So what are the topics of his rants? The biased approach to race by “mainstream” media outlets, modern crimes perpetrated by Jewish people, the death of Trayvon Martin and more. In one thread published on the topic of male circumcision last January, he unleashed on Jews, saying, “Your typical left-wing Jew is obnoxious about being Jewish and constantly drawing attention to their Jewishness. … Your hardcore Orthodox Jews were probably upset when American Christians first started doing [circumcisions].”
What makes such anti-Semitic claims notable is this fact: Rogers leads one of the most active CCC chapters in the country, in South Carolina. That chapter has held repeated rallies against undocumented workers at the state Capitol and hotly defended the Confederate battle flag. Rogers told one reporter that the NAACP was “busing in welfare mothers” to demonstrate against the flag.
And while it might seem expected that Rogers would post to Stormfront, the CCC has long tried to distance itself from the more brazen racists in the world. In fact, since its beginning as the old White Citizens Councils, which were formed in the 1950s and 1960s to battle school desegregation in the South, the CCC has sought to legitimize itself by associating with prominent politicians ––Republican congressional stars like Trent Lott have been tied to the group, and more recently, former Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo, who is scheduled to address the council’s annual conference this weekend in Nashville.
And that is what makes Rogers’ commentary so striking. Despite running a flag business that sells T-shirt featuring the unblushing slogan, “White Pride Worldwide,” and working passionately for the CCC for years, he has not been one to spew anti-Semitic rants. Until now.

Summary: As one of the key players in the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), Kyle Rogers has never backed down from urging politicians to stand up for whites. But in recent months, when not mugging for the camera in an ill-fitting suit, the modern face of the council has another life posting anti-Semitic tirades to the Internet’s largest white nationalist message board. According to several anti-racist websites, including One People’s Project , Rogers regularly posts to Stormfront.org –– one of…


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
More Than An Occasional Crank: 2,012 Times the Center for Immigration Studies Circulated White Nationalist Content
May 23, 2017
Stephen Piggott and Alex Amend
Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) executive director Mark Krikorian badly wants respect.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
California chapter of anti-LGBT hate group MassResistance gets a white nationalist member
August 16, 2018
Hatewatch Staff
The California chapter of
anti-LGBT hate group MassResistance
was formed in May 2016 by longtime anti-immigrant and nativist activist Arthur Schaper. Now it’s added a white nationalist to its ranks.


Hatewatch

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


Hatewatch

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


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 11/16/2016
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.


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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

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

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

“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

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


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
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

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.


Bulletin: Alleged Sikh Temple Shooter Former Member of Skinhead Band

The man who allegedly murdered six people at a Sikh temple in suburban Milwaukee yesterday, identified in media reports as Wade Michael Page, was a frustrated neo-Nazi who had been the leader of a racist white-power band.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Trio convicted of anti-Muslim bomb  plot during presidential election
April 20, 2018
Bill Morlin and Ryan Lenz
Three Kansas militia members who called themselves the “Crusaders” were convicted Wednesday in a plot to detonate a bomb and kill Muslim immigrants a day after the 2016 presidential election.


Hatewatch

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


Hatewatch

It was to have been a historic roundup of enemies of the extreme right, ending with Hillary Clinton, former FBI director James Comey, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former Senator Harry Reid and a slew of other politicians, jurists and law enforcement officers in the custody of those who would have them tried by “common law grand juries” for their perceived crimes.


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
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 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

Sovereign citizens are a diverse group of individuals whose activities and motives vary, but whose core tenets are the typically the same. They view United States citizenship, established government, authority and institutions as illegitimate and consider themselves immune from and therefore above the law.


Hatewatch

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


Hatewatch


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 12/14/2018
December 14, 2018
Hatewatch Staff
Dropping the ball on right-wing extremism; PewDiePie’s ties to bigots spells trouble; Alt-right recruiting from ranks of Trump-loving evangelicals; and more.


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

This is the second update from the Southern Poverty Law Center's effort to collect reports of hateful incidents of harassment around the country. This report covers the full week (Wednesday Nov. 9 to Wednesday Nov. 16) since the presidential election.


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
A Chorus of Violence: Jack Donovan and the Organizing Power of Male Supremacy
March 27, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
Across the contemporary far right, perhaps no sound carries further than the chorus of moaning that emanates from the “Manosphere.”


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 6/20/2017
June 20, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
Right-wing pundits already declaring civil war; Non-Muslim attackers draw less media; Kelly pushed Jones on Sandy Hook denialism; and more.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 3/22/2017
March 22, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
Gabriel visits the Trump White House; Alt-right may have a nexus with Russians; Twitter’s new software aims to oust users threatening violence; and more.


Washington Bomb-Maker Who Tried to Help Jihadists Pleads Guilty

A terrorist sympathizer, a college dropout who idolized both American terrorist Timothy McVeigh and Islamic jihadists while learning the hard way how to build bombs, likely faces a lengthy prison sentence after confessing to two terrorism-related crimes.
Joseph Jefferey Brice, 22, who nearly died when one of his eight-pound homemade bombs exploded in April 2010, pleaded guilty Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Spokane to illegally making the device and later providing bomb-making instructions online to potential foreign terrorists.
The latter charge of providing material support to terrorists reached the attention of senior Justice Department officials because of its national security implications, according to U.S. Attorney Michael Ormsby, who declined further comment on the case.
Brice faces up to 15 years in prison when he’s sentenced on Jan. 9 by U.S. District Judge Lonny Suko.
Brice used the Internet to help foreign terrorists learn bomb-making techniques, knowing that such training would lead to the use, attempted use or threatened use of a weapon of mass destruction, Assistant U.S. Attorney Russell Smoot said in court filings.
The prosecutor described Brice as an intelligent young man with an “insatiable interest” in building and blowing up bombs, who used social media for discussions about using improvised explosive devices to bomb the U.S. Courthouse in Spokane or as diversions for bank robberies.
Brice also posted six YouTube “Strength of Allah” videos in 2010 and 2011, using an Al Qaeda in Iraq logo and “glorifying Jihad and the use of explosives,” and even continued those discussions after being contacted by FBI agents, the documents say.
All that came after Brice, who graduated from high school in Clarkston, Wash., nearly died on April 18, 2010, when the “apan” (acetone peroxide ammonium nitrate) bomb he built prematurely exploded when he lit the fuse and didn’t run away fast enough in eastern Washington’s rural Whitman County.
That occurred one day before the anniversary of the antigovernment terrorist act carried out by his role model, Timothy McVeigh , who murdered 168 people with a truck bomb he detonated outside the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.
The court documents say Brice not only emulated and claimed that he looked like McVeigh but also shared his antigovernment views and downloaded The Turner Diaries, a novel by William Pierce that was a blueprint for the Oklahoma City bombing.
Then, the court documents say, Brice ordered one of his bomb-making components – tannerite – on the Internet. The chemical is unregulated and can be legally possessed as a shock-sensitive explosive detonated with firearms.
Brice used it to make a bomb that exploded with such force that it blew off his shirt and pants, broke bones, severely damaged and burned his legs, and left him unconscious for 12 days in a Seattle burn hospital.His girlfriend watched in amazement, uninjured, but wasn’t initially truthful with investigators, the documents say.
When Brice recovered four months later, a Whitman County sheriff’s deputy who investigated the blast decided not to recommend the filing of state charges because he believed, after a phone interview, that the young man “had learned his lesson the hard way.” Agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives also initially concluded the explosion was caused by a malfunction with tannerite, even though Brice didn’t have a firearm with him to ignite the explosive, the court documents say.
However, the FBI’s Inland Northwest Joint Terrorism Task Force had received tips about Brice’s interest in bomb-building and those leads were actively pursued after, in an unrelated incident, an unexploded backpack bomb was found on Jan. 17, 2011, in Spokane along the route of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade.
The documents say Brice was ruled out as a suspect in the MLK bomb and had no known connection with Kevin W. Harpham , a neo-Nazi who ultimately confessed to building and planting that device. Harpham was sentenced to 37 years in prison.
Meanwhile, the FBI’s interest in Brice heightened when agents learned that the explosion that nearly killed him didn’t end his interest and promotion of bomb-building techniques. “Since his near-fatal incident,” court documents say, “Brice, a self-declared, conservative, right-wing Christian, appeared to undergo a rapid radicalization to Islam.”
As the investigation progressed, FBI agents reviewed Brice’s online activity and telephone records. He was arrested on May 9, 2011.
The investigation turned up thousands of documents, including videos – some encrypted – of everything from a “Times Square Bomb Test” to Chechen extremists destroying Russian military equipment to the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers when Brice was 11.
When Brice was questioned by a terrorism task force agent in March 2011, two months after the Spokane bomb was discovered and safely defused, he confessed to building the destructive device that caused his injuries the previous year. The court documents also say he bragged about “his own expertise in explosives, destructive devices, weapons of mass destruction” and suicide bombs.
Even after being questioned by FBI agents and finding a GPS-tracking device that apparently had been secretly placed on his vehicle, Brice continued posting pro-jihad, anti-Western comments on public and private websites.
In early May 2011, using the screen name Yusuf90, Brice met a fellow jihadist named “Abu Harith” on the password-protected Deen Al Haq website. That introduction led to E-mail exchanges, and eventually Brice sent along detailed instructions for “open source” bomb-making, the documents say.
When he was arrested, Brice confessed to his involvement during a four-hour interview where he learned that Abu Harith really was an undercover FBI employee.
Still, the documents say, Brice tried to laugh it all off:  “It’s going to look like I’m a fucking Muslim terrorist, but I was just fucking with these guys. I was just toying with them. I drink beer, I drink beer every day. I do. I do everything opposite of whatever it looks like. I was just fucking with them. There’s a guy, this is going to look so bad!”

Summary: A terrorist sympathizer, a college dropout who idolized both American terrorist Timothy McVeigh and Islamic jihadists while learning the hard way how to build bombs, likely faces a lengthy prison sentence after confessing to two terrorism-related crimes. Joseph Jefferey Brice, 22, who nearly died when one of his eight-pound homemade bombs exploded in April 2010, pleaded guilty Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Spokane to illegally making the device and later providing bomb-making instructions…


Hammerfest Racist Rock Festival Planned for Boise on Saturday

The annual neo-Nazi skinhead rock concert known as Hammerfest will be held this Saturday in or near Boise, Idaho, where authorities say they are worried about the potential for violence at or after the event.
Hammerskin Nation, one of the largest and most-dangerous neo-Nazi skinhead groups in the United States, is sponsoring the 25 th annual gathering after patching up differences with a former rival, the equally violent Vinlanders Social Club .
Both skinhead groups appear to be strengthening ties with so-called outlaw motorcycle clubs – bikers who say they are part of the “1 percent” crowd and pride themselves on a toughness that borders or crosses into criminality — according to information developed by the Southern Poverty Law Center. “We expect to see bikers at this year’s event,” said Mark Potok, senior fellow at the SPLC.
Potok also said that the location of the event reflected new strength in the region. “The fact that it’s planned for Boise suggests that Hammerskin Nation is growing stronger in the Pacific Northwest than it has been for years,” he said.
The exact location of this year’s Hammerfest hasn’t been announced and its promoters aren’t talking. Promoters are expected to use social networking sites and word of mouth to identify to location just hours before the event begins.
Jeff Basterrechea, of the Boise Police Department’s gang unit, told the Idaho Statesman that groups like Hammerskin Nation typically don’t announce the location in advance “because they believe other groups will sabotage them,” the newspaper reported. “They’re so controversial, they’ll wait until the last moment to advertise where the concert will be,” he said.
Often, militant anti-racist groups attempt to seek out white power music venues in order to prevent the bands from playing. Occasionally, violence has broken out between the so-called anti-fascists and the neo-Nazi rock enthusiasts.
Adam Park, a spokesman for the City of Boise, told the Los Angeles Times that the city already has received phone calls from citizens concerned about the white supremacy event. “We’ll be talking with the police and monitoring this closely to ensure that if there is an event like this, that there’s no negative repercussions from it,” Park said. “But in this country we have free speech rights, and if an organization, even one espousing some pretty hateful and vile beliefs, wants to put on an event, then that’s something that we have to let proceed,” he said.
Hammerskin Nation — whose members are known as Hammerskins — is a nationwide skinhead federation with six regional factions, some with multiple chapters. The regional groups are the Confederate Hammerskins, the Midland Hammerskins, the Northern Hammerskins, the Western Hammerskins, the Eastern Hammerskins and the apparently revivified Northwest Hammerskins. The group appears to have new chapters in Boise, Pennsylvania and San Diego, Calif.
Hammerfest is an opportunity for the racist gang to promote its message – with the hope of attracting young recruits – through racist skinhead music bearing a violent message directed at Jews, black and gay people, and the “Zionist Occupied Government” — the federal government, which most American neo-Nazis see as having been taken over by Jews. A flyer promoting Saturday’s event says this year’s bands will include Blue Eyed Devils, Thirteen Knots, Chaos 88, Rebel Devils and Fucc Face 88, along with “international guests not to be missed.”
The violence often associated with the Hammerskins and the white power music scene generally was brought dramatically to light early this August, when a man named Wade M. Page went on a rampage at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., where he killed six people and wounded three others before he died during a shootout with police. Page had played with a series of bands including Blue Eyed Devils and he was a recently “patched” member of the Northern Hammerskins.

Summary: The annual neo-Nazi skinhead rock concert known as Hammerfest will be held this Saturday in or near Boise, Idaho, where authorities say they are worried about the potential for violence at or after the event. Hammerskin Nation, one of the largest and most-dangerous neo-Nazi skinhead groups in the United States, is sponsoring the 25 th annual gathering after patching up differences with a former rival, the equally violent Vinlanders Social Club . Both skinhead groups appear to be strengthening…


Hatewatch

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


Hatewatch

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
Far-right conspiracists stir up hysteria about nonexistent 'civil war' plot by 'antifa'
November 13, 2017
David Neiwert
Alt-right figures, Infowars, and their conspiracist cohort spin baseless and increasingly wild claims of impending violence, from a November 4 nonevent to the Texas church shooting.


Muslims 'Under Attack,' Says Toledo Mosque Official After Arson

Muslims and their places of worship “are clearly under attack,” says the president of one of the country’s largest mosques, which was heavily damaged four days ago in an arson fire.
“We’re actually reeling in disbelief,” Dr. Mahjabeen Islam, president of the Islamic Center of Toledo in Ohio, told Hatewatch today in describing the devastation caused by a fire deliberately set in the mosque’s prayer area on Sunday afternoon, just minutes after worshippers had left the building.
“This is a hate crime and it’s very significant it was started in the center of the prayer area, right under the dome,” said Islam. The mosque she heads is the third largest in the United States, a 70,000-square foot landmark, visible for miles, with 3,000 members who will celebrate the center’s 32 nd anniversary on Friday.
The fire and water damage from sprinklers touched every room in the Islamic Center, causing an estimated $1 million to $1.5 million in damages. Repairs will take an estimated six months.
A suspect in the arson, whose image was captured on surveillance cameras, was arrested Tuesday in neighboring Indiana. On Wednesday, Randy T. Linn, a 52-year-old truck driver from St. Joe, Ind., was charged in Perrysburg, Ohio, Municipal Court with two counts of aggravated arson, aggravated burglary, and carrying a concealed weapon, the Toledo Blade reported in today’s editions.
“It was a very symbolic fire, we believe, in that it was started in the center of the prayer area right under the dome,” Islam said.
In August, during Ramadan, an anonymous, threatening letter was sent to the mosque with the word “stopped” written in Arabic.
“Never in our wildest dreams did we believe something like this would happen to us,” Islam said. “We are clearly under attack. If our mosque had not been made of brick and concrete, it would have burned to the ground.”
The fire also damaged and shut down classrooms of the Islamic School of Greater Toledo, a K-5 elementary school at the center. Those children are now attending classes at a nearby community college.
The FBI is investigating the arson, and federal hate crime charges may be forthcoming, Hatewatch has learned.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization, says the arson is the latest in a notable spike in anti-Islamic hate crimes. CAIR released a report last month detailing the increase in attacks against Muslims and mosques.
During Ramadan, which started on July 20 and ended at sundown on Aug. 18, there was “one of the worst spikes of anti-Muslim incidents in over a decade,” the CAIR report says.
In the first seven months of this year, there were 10 incidents in which Muslim places of worship were targeted. During 13 days in August, Muslim places of worship were targeted eight more times, the CAIR report said.
“We do feel this is part of an overall trend of attacks on mosques and not an isolated incident,” Julia Shearson, CAIR’s director for Northern Ohio, told Hatewatch.
“We believe there a climate that’s been created in the political sphere and the far-right media blogosphere that gives a green light to extremists to act out and commit hate crimes against religious institutions and their members,” she said.
“I don’t think we’ve seen this kind of intolerance toward religious minorities since before the civil rights movement.”
The CAIR official said civic and political leaders should consider convening a national summit on religious intolerance. “For some reason, it’s really been allowed to fester,” she said.
The growing list of anti-Islamic crimes includes the unsolved arson fire of another mosque in Joplin, Mo., that burned to the ground on Aug. 6. In Illinois, shots were fired at a mosque in Morton Grove, and an acid bomb was thrown at an Islamic school in Lombard. In Oklahoma, vandals fired paint balls at a mosque. In California, pigs’ legs were thrown at a mosque. In Panama City, Fla., a firebomb damaged a Muslim family’s home.
Sometimes, it appears, hate crimes have been directed at victims the perpetrators may have mistakenly believed were Muslims, when in fact they were members of another religious faith.
On Aug. 5, six members of a Sikh temple in suburban Milwaukee were gunned down by neo-Nazi skinhead Wade Michael Page, who belonged to a racist white power band.
Also during this year’s Ramadan, an Arab Christian church in Detroit was vandalized.

Summary: Muslims and their places of worship “are clearly under attack,” says the president of one of the country’s largest mosques, which was heavily damaged four days ago in an arson fire. “We’re actually reeling in disbelief,” Dr. Mahjabeen Islam, president of the Islamic Center of Toledo in Ohio, told Hatewatch today in describing the devastation caused by a fire deliberately set in the mosque’s prayer area on Sunday afternoon, just minutes after worshippers had left the building. “This is a hate…


Hatewatch

The incessant power struggles that plague militia groups prompted defections in the Three Percent Security Force, robbed its leader of control and delivered the well-known antigovernment militia to the man who defied his commander.


Self-Described Anarchists in Ohio Terror Plot Plead Guilty

Four of five self-proclaimed anarchists – calling themselves the Revolutionary People’s Party – have now confessed to involvement in a conspiracy in late April to use C-4 explosives to blow up an interstate highway bridge near Cleveland.
After their arrests, most of the suspects quickly agreed to discuss their plans with FBI agents during middle-of-the-night interviews. One of the would-be bombers said he just wanted to go to sleep and forget everything, court documents disclose.
Douglas L. Wright, 26, of Indianapolis; Brandon L. Baxter, 20, of Lakewood, Ohio; and Connor C. Stevens, 20, of Berea, Ohio, all pleaded guilty Tuesday in U.S. district court in Cleveland. Each admitted conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction, attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, and attempted use of an explosive device to destroy property used in interstate commerce.
A fourth defendant, Anthony M. Hayne, 35, of Cleveland, pleaded guilty to those same charges on July 25, agreeing to become a prosecution witnesses against his co-defendants if they took their cases to trial. They, in turn, entered into plea negotiations with federal prosecutors, leading to Tuesday’s pleas. Dates for sentencing haven’t been set, but the defendants likely will face substantial prison time.
The pleas leave just one defendant, Joshua Stafford, 23, of Cleveland, whose case will be scheduled for trial separately after a court-ordered evaluation is completed.
The five were arrested April 30, just hours before their planned act of terrorism was to coincide with May 1 antigovernment, anti-establishment protests planned in Cleveland and other U.S. cities. The C-4 explosive devices, which were inert, were purchased by the suspects the day before their arrests from a man who turned out to be an undercover FBI agent, according to court documents. The FBI said the public was never in danger.
“We are pleased these defendants have admitted to their intent to utilize violence, which threatened innocent citizens, to further their ideological views,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Stephen Anthony said. “The safety of our citizens is and continues to be the FBI’s primary focus as demonstrated by this investigation. The Joint Terrorism Task Force will continue to be vigilant in our efforts to detect and disrupt any terrorism threat, domestic or international.”
After Hayne’s guilty plea in July, defense attorneys for the remaining defendants indicated they would offer an entrapment defense. Stevens’ attorney filed a motion to block the prosecution’s use of statements made by the defendants following their arrests. Court documents show Wright’s attorney also filed a motion for a separate trial based in part on those incriminating statements.
Federal prosecutors countered, filing documents indicating they planned to use post-arrest statements if the cases went to trial. Those documents include excerpts of statements made by the defendants.
“Honestly, the intent was to bring the bridge down,” Baxter told FBI agents, according to one government document. “I didn’t think there was enough (C-4) to do it. I just wanted to have it shut down for a few days. Stop, uh, flow of money for a few days from that area.”
The plotters intended to use a mobile phone to detonate two four-pound boxes of C-4 – a military-grade explosive – that were placed at the base of the Route 82 bridge crossing the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, south of downtown Cleveland.
The anarchists initially discussed using smoke grenades to distract law enforcement while co-conspirators would use explosives to topple signs atop high-rise financial institutions in downtown Cleveland. They also discussed bombing a Ku Klux Klan gathering spot or a Federal Reserve Bank.
The defendants apparently formed the Revolutionary People’s Party after they grew disappointed with the lack of action by people in the Occupy Movement, with whom they had been affiliated.
“I’ve been working with Occupy and it’s like I can’t even get them to do anything that would upset people,” Baxter told FBI agents, according to court documents.  Those he met in the Occupy Movement, Baxter said, wouldn’t “disrupt traffic … do anything illegal. A lot of laws are, are ridiculous. Can’t even get people to jay walk half the time in a march, or take the march off the sidewalk into the street.  It’s like, ridiculous.”
Baxter said at one point during his interview with the FBI that he thought about backing out of the plot, not for fear of causing casualties and damage, but because of the way the act of terrorism would be viewed.
“Yeah, [I] thought the corporate media would spin it as a bunch of crazy people who do what crazy people do, not as a, uh, politically driven thing.”
Stevens' attorney argued for suppression of statements he made in a videotaped interview with agents, contending it was conducted under coercive conditions. But prosecutors countered by saying that wasn’t the case, that Stevens was given a blanket to get warm after his handcuffs were removed and later was allowed a cigarette and coffee break during the nearly four-hour interview with agents.
While being read his Miranda rights, Stevens told agents, “I feel like if I, if I exercise my right to remain silent, then I won’t be treated quite as kindly.”
To this, Special Agent Jared “Jake” Ruddy told the young anarchist he was “gonna have nothing but kindness from us. … We don’t operate any other way.”
To that, Stevens replied, “Well, I’ve been impressed so far, but –.”As he proceeded to read his advice of rights form, Stevens “teased” agents, referring to appointed defense attorneys as “public pretenders” and “kidding with the (FBI) agents about torture.”
Once Stevens agreed to answer questions, the FBI agent “asked what his initial thoughts were.” Stevens responded, “I just wanna go to sleep … and forget about everything.”

Summary: Four of five self-proclaimed anarchists – calling themselves the Revolutionary People’s Party – have now confessed to involvement in a conspiracy in late April to use C-4 explosives to blow up an interstate highway bridge near Cleveland. After their arrests, most of the suspects quickly agreed to discuss their plans with FBI agents during middle-of-the-night interviews. One of the would-be bombers said he just wanted to go to sleep and forget everything, court documents disclose. Douglas L.…


Five More Suspects Indicted in FEAR Militia Terror Plot

Three former U.S. Army soldiers are among five additional suspects indicted Tuesday in Georgia for their alleged roles in a secret militia plot that led, allegedly, to a double homicide.
The group, calling itself the FEAR Militia, was secretly formed by soldiers stationed at Fort Stewart. Its members armed themselves with $87,000 in assault weapons and discussed taking over the military base, poisoning fruit crops and blowing up a dam in Washington state, and assassinating President Obama, authorities say.
There are now 10 defendants facing state charges in Georgia in connection with the alleged militia plot and murders. No federal charges have been filed, but the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force is closely monitoring the case.
Tom Durden, the district attorney in Liberty County, Ga., has said he will seek the death penalty against the alleged ringleader, Army Pvt. Isaac Aguigui of Wenatchee, Wash., as well as Pvt. Christopher Salmon and Sgt. Anthony Peden, whose hometowns haven’t been disclosed.
Named in new indictments were Adam Dearman, Timothy Joiner, Randall Blake Dearman and Antony Garner, The Savannah Morning News reported. The four are charged with illegal gang activity and various counts of theft, burglary and auto break-ins.
The burglaries and thefts “were committed in an effort to fund FEAR and what FEAR was at least advocating they wanted to accomplish,” Durden was quoted as saying by The Associated Press
FEAR stood for Forever Enduring Always Ready, according to investigators.
The militia group was started after Aguigui got a $500,000 insurance settlement after the July 2011 death of his pregnant wife, Dierdre Wetzker Aguigui, who also was a soldier. She died at Fort Stewart where the couple was stationed. They met while attending a West Point Academy prep school.
Her father, Alma Wetzker, who lives in Minneapolis, told the Seattle Times last month that Dierdre Aguigui’s death, and that of her unborn child, remained “undetermined and under investigation” by authorities who labeled the case “highly suspicious.”
After getting the $500,000 insurance settlement, Aguigui allegedly used the money to fund the secret militia, prosecutors have said in outlining their case in court.  The money reportedly was used for the purchase of land for a militia base in Washington state and the expenditure of $87,000 for assault weapons from a Wenatchee gun store, High Mountain Hunting Supply.
It hasn’t been disclosed if those weapons were used in the double homicide.
Last December, two days after he left the Army, former solider Michael Roark and his 17-year-old girlfriend, Tiffany York, were lured into a wooded area near Fort Stewart and fatally shot, execution-style. Authorities say they believe the assassinations were carried out to protect the secrecy of the anarchist militia group operating with the ranks of the U.S. Army.
It was those murders and the search for the suspected killers that eventually led investigators to the FEAR militia.
Further insights were gained when one member of the group, Army Pfc. Michael Burnett, struck a plea bargain , pleaded guilty to manslaughter and started talking to investigators.
The other defendants charged in the case are Heather Salmon, who is Christopher Salmon’s wife, and Christopher Jenderseck, who is charged with evidence tampering. The prosecutor said Jenderseck is accused of helping the soldiers burn clothing they wore during the killings of Roark and York.

Summary: Three former U.S. Army soldiers are among five additional suspects indicted Tuesday in Georgia for their alleged roles in a secret militia plot that led, allegedly, to a double homicide. The group, calling itself the FEAR Militia, was secretly formed by soldiers stationed at Fort Stewart. Its members armed themselves with $87,000 in assault weapons and discussed taking over the military base, poisoning fruit crops and blowing up a dam in Washington state, and assassinating President Obama,…


Hatewatch

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


Hatewatch


Hatewatch

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

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


Hatewatch

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


Amish Leader, 15 Others Convicted of Hate Crimes in Beard-Cuttings

The leader of an Amish splinter sect in Ohio and 15 of his followers were convicted of federal hate crimes today for forcibly shaving the beards and hair of breakaway members of the religious community.
Amish bishop Samuel Mullet, 66, faces a minimum of 10 years in prison when he is sentenced, likely late this year.
The case marks the first convictions in Ohio under the federal Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crime Prevention Act, enacted in 2009.
The verdict by a jury composed of seven men and five women came after four days of deliberations, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported.
Prosecutors convinced the jury that the shearing of the beards and hair of Mullets’ perceived enemies rose above the level of a simple assault to that of a religious-motivated hate crime. Those involved in the attacks and all the victims are members of the Amish faith – traditionally pacifists who usually resolve their disputes internally without law enforcement.
The beards and hair of the victims were cut to disgrace the victims as punishment for “previous and ongoing religious disagreements” with Mullet and his followers in Ohio.
Defense attorneys for the 16 defendants called no witnesses, the Cleveland newspaper reported. In closing arguments, the defense team argued that the beard-cutting didn’t meet the definition of a hate crime, which required a religious motive and bodily injury, including disfigurement, for a conviction.
The defense claimed the beard cuttings, carried out in a series of raids ordered by Mullet, were motivated by love and compassion intended to compel the victims to return to a conservative Amish lifestyle under Mullet.
There were four separate attacks, involving nine male and female victims, between Sept. 6 and Nov. 9 of 2011 in Trumbull, Holmes and Jefferson counties in Ohio, according to details contained in a 21-page superseding indictment , returned last April.
The attackers took photographs during the assaults, and, after the FBI opened an investigation, the disposable camera used was buried at the base of a tree on Mullet’s property, the indictment said. The FBI recovered the camera earlier this year with assistance for a cooperating informant.
In the first attack, nine of the defendants and other participants not indicted hired a driver on Sept. 6 and traveled from Bergholz, Ohio, in Jefferson County to a couple’s residence in Trumbull County. Participants in that attack were Eli M. Miller, Lester Miller, Raymond Miller, Freeman Burkholder, Anna Miller, Lovina Miller, Kathryn Miller, Emma Miller and Elizabeth Miller.
The second attack on a lone male victim on Sept. 24, 2011, was carried out Levi Miller, Eli M. Miller, Emanuel Shrock and others not identified who cut off the victim’s beard and hair, according to federal court documents.
The third incident occurred on Oct. 4 when five men, identified in the indictment as Johnny S. Mullet, Danny S. Mullet, Lester S. Mullet, Levi F. Miller and Eli M. Miller, entered two homes and cut the beards and hair of four victims.
The fourth and final assault occurred on Nov. 9 when a man and a woman traveled to a home near Bergholz where they had their hair forcibly removed by Emanuel and Linda Shrock after telling a sheriff earlier that day that such an attack wouldn’t occur.

Summary: The leader of an Amish splinter sect in Ohio and 15 of his followers were convicted of federal hate crimes today for forcibly shaving the beards and hair of breakaway members of the religious community. Amish bishop Samuel Mullet, 66, faces a minimum of 10 years in prison when he is sentenced, likely late this year. The case marks the first convictions in Ohio under the federal Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crime Prevention Act, enacted in 2009. The verdict by a jury composed of…


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

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


Hatewatch

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


Hatewatch

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


Hatewatch

“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

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

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


Hatewatch

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


Hatewatch

The incessant power struggles that plague militia groups prompted defections in the Three Percent Security Force, robbed its leader of control and delivered the well-known antigovernment militia to the man who defied his commander.


Hatewatch

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


Hatewatch

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


Hatewatch


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 4/12/2017
April 12, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
It’s white Americans’ job to combat hate; Spicer apologizes for Hitler gaffe; Federal judge strikes down Texas’ discriminatory voter-ID law; and more.


Hatewatch

In early April, Congress held its first hearing on white nationalism since the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. What was supposed to be an opportunity to address the rising threat of far-right extremism was, at certain points, upended by conservatives who insisted the real threat came from the left.


Hatewatch

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


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
After New Zealand Shooting, Far-right, Racists Claim Victimhood, Hail Killer as Hero
March 15, 2019
Brett Barrouquere
Andrew Anglin found humor in the livestreamed video of a man in New Zealand storming into the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, then shooting and killing 49 people.


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

Last weekend, a motley crew of far-right groups assembled at New Orleans’ Lee Circle to protest the city’s removal of Confederate monuments. Bearing all manner of insignias, from the Confederate Battle Flag, Klan logos, Civil War kepis, Norse runes, the flag of “Kekistan,” the Gadsden flag, to U.S. flags, all were prepared for a brawl.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
The Internet Research Agency: behind the shadowy network that meddled in the 2016 Elections
February 21, 2018
Alexander Reid Ross
Special counsel Robert Mueller, Jr.,
indicted
13 agents from the Saint Petersburg based Internet Research Agency last Friday, but the shadowy figures behind the organization remain obscure.


Hatewatch

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


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 12/14/2018
December 14, 2018
Hatewatch Staff
Dropping the ball on right-wing extremism; PewDiePie’s ties to bigots spells trouble; Alt-right recruiting from ranks of Trump-loving evangelicals; and more.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 11/10/2017
November 10, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
Kelly lobbied to have Hondurans deported; Why the alt-right is obsessed with pedophilia; Transgender politicians celebrate victory over hate; and more.


White Nationalist in Race for Suburban Missouri School Board

A reported member of the white nationalist Council of Conservative Citizens is running for a seat on a suburban Kansas City, Mo., school board on a platform that includes “removing materials that promote racial diversity” in a district that is becoming increasingly diverse.
The candidate, Edward Stephens, a 25-year-old electrical engineer, came in fifth – dead last – with 5% of the vote when he first ran for a seat on the seven-member Park Hill School board in Platte County in 2012. A candidate who dropped out of the race before the election even got more votes than Stephens.
Students of color make up nearly 30% of the district as families flee the crumbling Kansas City school system. “Diversity has doubled in the last 15 years,” Park Hill School district spokeswoman, Nicole Kirby, told Hatewatch today. “The district supports diversity and making sure we are respecting students across all backgrounds.”
The Council’s newspaper, Citizen’s Informer , regularly publishes articles condemning “race mixing,” decrying the evils of illegal immigration, and lamenting the decline of white, European civilization. The group’s website once described black people as a “retrograde species of humanity.” Created in 1985, the Council is the modern reincarnation of the old White Citizens Councils, which were formed in the 1950s and 1960s to battle school desegregation in the South.
“As a Christian and Freemason, Edward is one of us,” the Council recently announced as it introduced Stephens to readers of its website. The announcement specifically described Stephens as a Council “member.”
Stephens could not be immediately reached for comment. In his campaign literature, he says he has a “heart-felt” desire to “produce the best possible future leaders of our community.”
Stephens, who grew up in Platte County and graduated from Park Hill High School in 2006 before earning a B.S. degree from Missouri University of Science & Technology, also calls for no new taxes and teaching “a pro-America agenda in our classrooms.”
Kirby, the district spokeswoman, said Stephens had also applied to finish the term of a board member who had resigned earlier in the year. “He was not selected,” she said.
In an interview last year with The Pitch , a weekly alternative newspaper in Kansas City, Stephens talked about some of his hopes for Park Hill , one of the best school districts in the state. According to the paper, Stephens said there was too much emphasis on Native American history in the schools.
“We should focus more as a district on programs that are going to focus on, basically, the white men that founded this country and built this country,” he told the paper. The headline on the story was “Park Hill’s school-board race has a great white dope: race baiter Edward Stephens.”
His candidacy is also being promoted on the website of the American Third Position , another white supremacist group, under this headline: “School Board Candidate Proposes A ‘White History Month.’” The story quoted Stephens saying: “I think we need to also pay attention to the white culture and white accomplishments. The vast majority of the Park Hill School District is white. … [I]t only makes sense to honor those things as well.”
By rejecting Stephens last year, the voters missed a golden opportunity for a few laughs and well-attended school board meetings, according to Kansas City blogger and columnist Chris Kamler.
“Surely he’d have come up with some entertaining proposals,” Kamler wrote in the Platte County Landmark shortly after last year’s election. “Maybe he’d have proposed making the Park Hill South Panthers the Park Hill South White Polar Bears? Oh, sure the rest of the board would [have] voted it down, but not [until] after we all had a good laugh.”
Kamler imagined Stephen’s presence would have packed board meetings and citizen participation “would’ve been at an all-time high as folks came from near and far to hear the racist and divisive comments of a school board member. You might’ve even gotten your own TLC Reality Show.”
The election for four open seats on the board is April 2.

Summary: A reported member of the white nationalist Council of Conservative Citizens is running for a seat on a suburban Kansas City, Mo., school board on a platform that includes “removing materials that promote racial diversity” in a district that is becoming increasingly diverse. The candidate, Edward Stephens, a 25-year-old electrical engineer, came in fifth – dead last – with 5% of the vote when he first ran for a seat on the seven-member Park Hill School board in Platte County in 2012. A…


Army Veteran Pleads Guilty in Fort Stewart Militia Case

Another former soldier has pleaded guilty for his role in an anti-government militia authorities say is responsible for the execution-style murder of two teenagers in the Georgia woods in late 2011.
Timothy Joiner, a 22-year-old Iraq War veteran, pleaded guilty Tuesday in Liberty County, Ga., to more than 30 charges of burglary, financial-transaction-card thefts, and violations of the Georgia Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act among other crimes, according to the Associated Press.
The AP quoted the lead prosecutor in the case, Isabel Pauley, as saying Joiner’s crime wave was an attempt to raise enough money to bail another member of the militia out of jail. Joiner was arrested before that could happen.
The militia known as Forever Enduring Always Ready, or FEAR, was based at Fort Stewart, a sprawling Army base in Georgia. More than 10 members of the group have been arrested since Michael Roark, 19, a recently discharged soldier who served at the base, and his girlfriend, Tiffany York, 17, a high school junior, were found shot to death in the woods not far from the base shortly before Christmas 2011.
The young sweethearts had each been shot twice in the head. Pauley told the Intelligence Report last fall that the couple was killed to keep them from revealing what they knew about FEAR and its plot to overthrow the government through a campaign of terrorist attacks and political assassinations. Authorities said Roark had helped the militia purchase nearly $90,000 worth of weapons and bomb-making materials before he apparently grew disillusioned with FEAR and left the Army. He and York were killed a few days after his discharge.
Four members of FEAR, including its leader, Pvt. Isaac Aguigui, have been charged with their murder.
Joiner was not involved in the killings. Pauley told the AP that FEAR was split into different cells. Joiner belonged to the cell responsible for raising money for the group. He was trying to rob and steal enough money for bail for the leader of his cell, Adam Dearman, when he was arrested.
Authorities said Joiner pleaded guilty as a first-time offender and was sentenced to five years in prison and 10 years probation.
He is at least the third member of FEAR to plead guilty. After he was indicted last year, Joiner refused comment to the AP, except for declaring, “I’m a proud Republican .’’

Summary: Another former soldier has pleaded guilty for his role in an anti-government militia authorities say is responsible for the execution-style murder of two teenagers in the Georgia woods in late 2011. Timothy Joiner, a 22-year-old Iraq War veteran, pleaded guilty Tuesday in Liberty County, Ga., to more than 30 charges of burglary, financial-transaction-card thefts, and violations of the Georgia Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act among other crimes, according to the Associated Press. The AP…


Hatewatch

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


Hatewatch

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


Hatewatch

Reporting on organized white supremacy comes with a myriad of challenges. We confront those challenges on Hatewatch daily with varying degrees of frustration and success. And we have watched with sympathy –– and, yes, at times frustration –– as reporters and editors have grappled with white supremacy rebranded as the “Alt-Right.”


Hatewatch

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


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
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


TeaParty.org Drops the (Other) H-Bomb

Godwin’s Law, an Internet adage started by lawyer and writer Mike Godwin in 1990, states, “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”
The law’s point, Godwin explained in a 1995 article for Wired magazine, was the Internet seems to lead to glib comparisons between various politicians’ behavior and Hitler and Nazis which “invariably … trivialized the horror of the Holocaust and the social pathology of the Nazis”.
Godwin’s Law proved true once again on Friday, when TeaParty.org, a particularly vicious faction of the nebulous right-wing movement, treated subscribers to an E-mail blast titled “Stop America’s Hitler,” featuring a picture of President Obama sporting a Hitler moustache. If that wasn’t enough, the E-mail also included a photograph of two Nazis executing a victim with a pistol.
“If you were to make a movie today about a nation where only the police and military had guns, would you call it Schindler’s America?” the E-mail asks. “This is exactly what is happening. … It's INSANITY. We are being stripped bare of our liberties and rights,” and “[t]o this the Tea Party says HELL NO.”
It continued, “Members of the TeaParty, red-blooded Americans and fellow citizens, the time is coming when you must decide. A Lexington and Concorde [sic] moment when you must decide which is greater: the demands of a tyrannical government as they disarm us and eviscerate our liberties or your own personal rights.”
TeaParty.org has already made its decision and is ready to take action. The E-mail blast promotes a fundraising campaign called “Operation Raise Hell,” which will “demand the deportation of Piers Morgan,” write a “big fat check” to support a “Youth Firearms Training Initiative” to be run by Gun Owners of America, and send a Tea Party team to Washington to “get in their faces.”
“Someday,” the fundraising pitch concludes, “your children will thank you for saving their future from Obama’s Soviet-Style Socialist State.”
Let’s get this straight: Unless we arm our children and deport a gun-control-friendly British CNN host, the president of the United States, who is practically the same as Hitler, is going to create some kind of United Soviet Socialist States of America by abolishing guns rights?
That’s a lot to untangle.
First, a word about our sponsors. TeaParty.org, also known as the 1776 Tea Party, is an especially belligerent faction of the Tea Party movement whose founder, Dale Robertson , once showed up at a Houston rally carrying a sign that read, “Congress = Slaveowner, Taxpayer = N----- [sic].” Its CEO, Steve Eichler, used to be executive director of the Minuteman Project , a nativist extremist group whose splashiest event was a month-long vigilante gathering on the Arizona border in April 2005.
TeaParty.org boasts that it is “the ONLY tea party praised by Dr. Michael Savage ,” a radio talk show host who was fired from MSNBC in 2003 after describing an unidentified caller to his show as a “sodomite” who should “get AIDS and die.” Its website proudly features original content by Jerome Corsi , an influential conspiracy theorist best known for proposing, at various times, that President Obama is not a U.S. citizen ; that the president’s true father is the late labor activist Frank Marshall Davis ; and that Obama is gay and married to a Pakistani man . Really.
The site also includes content from WorldNetDaily , an extreme-right online publication that plugs all manner of conpiracist nonsense (the imminent end of the world, the cause of homosexuality is soybean consumption — you get the idea), and from Alex Jones , an antigoverment conspiracy monger whose response to recent calls for gun control has been so unhinged that even Glenn Beck – Glenn Beck! – described him as a “ crazy person .”
Now that we’ve taken care of explaining who is behind these wild claims about “Schindler’s America,” it’s time to get to the what of the matter – as in, what the heck are these guys talking about?
“Remember, Hitler and his Nazi regime disarmed the people,” Friday’s E-mail blast warns. “The comparison between Hitler and Obama is striking.”
Addressing the problems with this ludicrous “comparison” is a little like explaining why a raven is nothing like a writing desk (h/t Lewis Carroll). But we’ll stick with the salient comparison, which seems to be the idea that Obama is like Hitler in some way that involves gun control.
Gun rights absolutists have for decades claimed that America’s gun control laws were somehow inspired by Hitler, and that the Holocaust itself was somehow caused — or at least not prevented — by gun control.
As Hatewatch has explained at length elsewhere , the man who did the most to popularize this idea was the late Aaron Zelman, founder of a Wisconsin-based nonprofit called Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO), which touts itself as “America’s Most Aggressive Defender of Firearms Ownership.” Zelman’s most outrageous claim, outlined at length in his 1993 book ‘Gun Control’: Gateway to Tyranny , was that the 1968 Gun Control Act was explicitly based on Hitler’s gun laws. JFPO also claims the state-sanctioned mass murders and genocides in Ottoman Turkey, the USSR, Nazi Germany, China (under both Chiang Kai-Shek and Mao), Guatemala, Uganda, Cambodia, and Rwanda were all caused by variations on gun control laws, and conclude that tens of millions died as a result of gun control, not least among them the victims of Hitler’s reign.
As with many conspiracy theories, there’s a tiny kernel of truth to JFPO’s claim: In 1938, one day after Kristallnacht (a state-sanctioned pogrom that led to the burning of synagogues, destruction of Jewish businesses and property, and is generally considered to have been the beginning of a new phase of anti-Jewish violence in Nazi Germany), the German government issued a decree banning Jews from “acquiring, possessing, and carrying firearms and ammunition, as well as truncheons or stabbing weapons,” and requiring those who owned such weapons to turn them in to authorities. The punishment was imprisonment.
Indisputably, then, the Nazis opposed ownership of guns by Jews.
But – as hardly needs to be said – Nazis opposed Jews in general, and laws designed to disenfranchise and drive them out of Germany were implemented long before 1938, when the genocide began in earnest.
Moreover, gun control in Germany did not begin under the Nazis. In fact, except for bans on gun ownership by Jews and other perceived enemies, experts generally agree that the Third Reich’s gun laws were overall more relaxed than those enacted under its predecessor government, the Weimar Republic.
Bernard Harcourt, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, traced the evolution of German guns laws between 1919 and 1938 in an excellent 2004 paper, “ On Gun Registration, the NRA, Adolf Hitler, and Nazi Gun Laws: Exploding the Gun Culture Wars .” Harcourt notes that the Weimar Republic, reflecting the Treaty of Versailles’ “draconian” restrictions on weapons possession, banned gun ownership outright in 1919. Its gun laws were relaxed in 1928, but continued to require that all weapons be registered. The 1938 weapons law enacted under Hitler “represented a further liberalization of gun control regulations” [emphasis added] – deregulating the acquisition and sales of guns and ammunition, exempting entire groups from the permit requirement, lowering the age at which it was legal to own a gun from 20 to 18, and extending the validity of permits from one to three years.
“Hitler intended to liberalize gun control laws in Germany for ‘trustworthy’ German citizens, while disarming ‘unreliable’ persons, especially opponents of National Socialism and Jews, [so] [i]t is absurd to even try to characterize this as either pro-or anti-gun control,” Harcourt wrote. “But if forced to, it seems fair to conclude – at least preliminarily – that the Nazis were in favor of less gun control than the Weimar Republic for the ‘trustworthy’ German citizen – while disarming and engaging in a genocide of the Jewish population.”
And that’s about that for TeaParty.org’s supposedly “striking” comparison between Hitler and Obama.
Now to TeaParty.org’s goals – funding a “Youth Firearms Training Initiative” run by Gun Owners of America, deporting Piers Morgan, and going to Washington to “get in their faces.”
Gun Owners of America is an extreme-right organization whose executive director, Larry Pratt , helped outline the contours of the modern militia movement at an infamous 1992 convention of antigovernment fanatics and white supremacists in Estes Park, Colo. In 1996, Pratt was ejected as national co-chair of Pat Buchanan's presidential candidates when his ties to the white supremacist convener of the Estes Park gathering were made public. “The Second Amendment ain’t about duck hunting,” he reportedly told the group.
Neither, presumably, would the “training institute” Pratt and TeaParty.org intend to run for young people.
Piers Morgan, of course, is the CNN host whose advocacy of gun control has become something of a media circus featuring shouting matches with gun rights absolutists – including Pratt, who Morgan earlier this month called “an unbelievably stupid man.” A petition demanding Morgan’s deportation started by Alex Jones sidekick Kurt Nimmo has garnered tens of thousands of signatures, and TeaParty.org apparently wants donors to think it will use their money will make this absurd fantasy come true.
Then there’s the plan to “get in their faces” in Washington. Given the context, we can only assume this means that TeaParty.org hopes its emissaries will start some kind of argument with gun control advocates.
Well, that’s their right – under the First Amendment, they can petition the government for redress of grievances till they’re blue in the face, making as many Hitler comparisons as they feel their point about gun rights warrants.
Of course, Godwin’s Law about Internet discussion and Nazis has a few corollaries – one of which, according to Wikipedia (which on matters such as these is as authoritative a source as any, given that Godwin served as general counsel to the Wikimedia foundation from 2007-2010) states that once the comparison is made, the conversation is over and the party that brought up the Nazis “has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress.”
So TeaParty.org can go forth and get in “their” faces. Their silly and spurious Hitler comparison only undercuts whatever serious points might be made by gun rights advocates as Americans ponder an updated take on the Second Amendment.

Summary: Godwin’s Law, an Internet adage started by lawyer and writer Mike Godwin in 1990, states, “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” The law’s point, Godwin explained in a 1995 article for Wired magazine, was the Internet seems to lead to glib comparisons between various politicians’ behavior and Hitler and Nazis which “invariably … trivialized the horror of the Holocaust and the social pathology of the Nazis”. Godwin’s Law…


Hatewatch
Police: Hostage Taker in Alabama Standoff Has ‘Anti-America’ Views
Ryan Lenz
January 30, 2013
The man who ignited a hostage standoff in southern Alabama when he shot a bus driver and took a child into an underground bunker is a "survivalist" who has antigovernment views, an official with the Dale County Sheriff’s Office told Hatewatch this morning.
The gunman is identified as Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65, a Vietnam veteran. On Tuesday afternoon, Dykes allegedly stormed into a school bus in Midland City, Ala., shooting the bus driver four times with a 9 mm pistol before taking a child to an underground bunker behind his home. The bus driver, identified as 66-year-old Charles Poland Jr., later died.
Tim Byrd, chief investigator with the Dale County Sheriff’s Office, told Hatewatch that Dykes had “anti-America” views. "His friends and his neighbors stated that he did not trust the government, that he was a Vietnam vet, and that he had PTSD," Byrd said. "He was standoffish, didn't socialize or have any contact with anybody. He was a survivalist type."
Law enforcement officials said the hostage, a 6-year-old boy who has not been identified, “is okay” and had recently been delivered some needed medication. Police continue to communicate with Dykes through a PVC pipe leading into the bunker. Officials have cancelled classes at local schools, and Dale County Sheriff Wally Olson cautioned local residents to avoid the scene.
It was not immediately clear what prompted Dykes to storm the bus, but his motives appear to be related to a menacing charge in December. That month, Dykes pointed a gun at his neighbor, James Edward Davis Dr., who told the
Dothan Eagle
that Dykes accused him of driving on his yard. Dykes was scheduled to have a bench trial today on the charge, and an unidentified girl who Dykes released from the bus told reporters that Dykes was referring to his upcoming case.
A neighbor of Dykes, who identified himself as Mike Creel, said that Dykes moved on to his property about two years ago and began building an underground bunker, measuring about four by six feet and eight feet deep, right away, according to WSFA-TV. "It's the craziest thing," Davis told the
Dothan Eagle
. "He will be outside in his yard digging at 2:30 in the morning."

Summary: Hatewatch Police: Hostage Taker in Alabama Standoff Has ‘Anti-America’ Views Ryan Lenz January 30, 2013 The man who ignited a hostage standoff in southern Alabama when he shot a bus driver and took a child into an underground bunker is a "survivalist" who has antigovernment views, an official with the Dale County Sheriff’s Office told Hatewatch this morning. The gunman is identified as Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65, a Vietnam veteran. On Tuesday afternoon, Dykes allegedly stormed into a school bus in…


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

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

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

QAnon is the umbrella term for a sprawling spiderweb of right-wing internet conspiracy theories with antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ elements that falsely claim the world is run by a secret cabal of pedophiles who worship Satan and are plotting against President Trump. Though some influential individuals are active in the movement, it is not an organized group with defined leadership.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Neo-Nazi Murder Suspect  Tied to Jail Escape Attempt
February 15, 2017
Bill Morlin
A white supremacist awaiting trial on three murder charges was involved in a failed attempt to escape last weekend from the Clark County Jail in Vancouver, Wash., authorities say.


Hatewatch

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


Hatewatch

Gab, the floundering social media network that serves as an organizing hub for white supremacists, is inflating its number of users in federal securities filings relied on by investors and regulators, a software engineer for Gab’s web hosting company Sibyl System Ltd . tells Hatewatch.


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 1/30/2017
January 30, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
How Trump unleashed the tide of prejudice; Jews not mentioned in Holocaust remembrance statement; Cataloging the 'Alt-Right’s' memes; and more.


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 Headlines 1/6/2017
January 06, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
White nationalism filling a political vacuum; Hate crimes ease, but remain high; ‘Wall’ is now a fence, paid for by USA; and more.


Illinois Politician Associated With Racist Sites, Radio

Michael Kleen, the Republican candidate for mayor of Rockford, Ill., is running on an innocuous “safer streets” platform, pledging “appreciation for commonsense and moderation” on a campaign website that sparkles with sweet reason, offering a profile of a trustworthy, public-spirited candidate.
But Hatewatch has discovered that there’s more to Kleen than the sanitized information his campaign offers. The citizens of Rockford — the third largest city in Illinois, with a population that is 20% African-American and 16% Latino — may not realize that Kleen has published his very controversial views on immigration, secession and education on hate-oriented sites such as VDARE.com and WorldNetDaily.com . He also participated in several interviews on The Voice of Reason Radio Network, a mouthpiece for the white nationalist movement that went offline last August.
Kleen, 31, owns a desktop publishing business called Black Oak Media. He’s written fiction and nonfiction books, specializing in tales of the supernatural and Illinois historical lore. With his master’s degree in American history, he’s also dabbled in opinion posts and, he says, his interests are becoming increasingly political. After losing a race for the Winnebago county board last year — he did get 43% of the vote — Kleen became the Republican candidate for mayor of Rockford, a city with 153,00 residents.
His posts on VDARE have blasted multicultural education and a moderate immigration reform bill co-sponsored by Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain several years ago. “It would open the floodgates to immigration in the Southwest and give citizenship to millions of Mexican nationalists who … have no love for their adopted country and who seek the eventual cultural and political severance of large swaths of territory,” Kleen wrote in one post.
VDARE.com is an immigrant-bashing hate site that regularly publishes works by white supremacists, anti-Semites and others on the radical right. Peter Brimelow , who created a foundation that funds VDARE.com, also apparently appreciates Kleen’s work—and hoped to make a little money from it. He endorsed one of the candidate’s books a couple of years ago, presented a link to it for site visitors and noted that VDARE.com would get a commission from each book sold.
Kleen, however, says he no longer likes VDARE.com. After Hatewatch asked him about his posts, he replied in an E-mail that his columns “were unfortunately heavily edited by that website to be much more ‘salacious’ than they were originally.”
As for WorldNetDaily, a conspiracy-oriented “news” venue that once claimed in a six-part series that eating soy causes homosexuality, Kleen says he doesn’t like them any more either. He did warn a few years ago on the site that “Middle America” was getting fed up with the government, and that secession talk is serious business. But he stopped submitting to WND — which is also thick with anti-gay, anti-Muslim and antigovernment conspiracist posts — because it began publishing “birther” claims, Kleen told Hatewatch.
As for his three appearances on the now-defunct, racist Voice of Reason Radio Network, Kleen offered no specific explanation. He does say, “Years ago (perhaps because of youth), I was much more philosophically radical than I am today.”
Actually, Kleen was interviewed on Voice of Reason as recently as two years ago by Tom Sunic, who described Kleen as “a good colleague and good friend.” Sunic is an extreme-right Croatian author and member of the board of directors of American Third Position , a racist political party that aims to deport immigrants and return the U.S. to white rule. Its top leader, California lawyer William Daniel Johnson , once sought to amend the Constitution so as to permanently deport any American with an “ascertainable trace of Negro blood,” along with all other non-white people.
In one interview, Kleen told Sunic he favored privatizing education in the U.S. and added that “only the wealthiest could afford the best education, but that’s the way it should be.” He railed with Sunic against Holocaust education in the schools and agreed that “homogeneous” cultures are best.
Kleen also proudly told Sunic that “Black Oak Presents,” a quarterly online journal he published, included a short story in which the U.S. president was strung up for crimes he’d committed that led to the downfall of the country. Kleen chuckled and said, “Only in ‘Black Oak Presents’ could a story like that be published.” Sunic responded, “Good news indeed.”
Kleen says he saw no reason to include any of these media pursuits on his campaign website or official biography. “My interests in philosophy and history often times lead me into murky waters, but I assure you, there is nothing really controversial here,” he explained by E-mail. “I categorically deny any affiliation with extremist or far right groups.”
Kleen adds, “At no time have I ever made any racist statements in my campaign literature, speeches, writing, or interviews.” And, he says, “I never turn down an opportunity to have my opinions heard, no matter who it is.”

Summary: Michael Kleen, the Republican candidate for mayor of Rockford, Ill., is running on an innocuous “safer streets” platform, pledging “appreciation for commonsense and moderation” on a campaign website that sparkles with sweet reason, offering a profile of a trustworthy, public-spirited candidate. But Hatewatch has discovered that there’s more to Kleen than the sanitized information his campaign offers. The citizens of Rockford — the third largest city in Illinois, with a population that is 20%…


Hatewatch

A U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant accused of being a domestic terrorist wrote a letter to prominent white supremacist Harold Covington discussing the idea of a “white homeland” and using “focused violence” to achieve that goal.


Latino Gang Leader Convicted in L.A. Ethnic Cleansing Campaign

A Latino street gang leader and his son were sentenced in federal court Monday to lengthy prison terms for their role in a years-long campaign of racist terror and ethnic cleansing targeting African Americans in and around Los Angeles.
Since at least the mid-1990s, Latino street gangs across Los Angeles County have been targeting, beating and sometimes killing blacks in an attempt to drive them out of the region.
Just before Christmas 2006, Cheryl Green, 14, playing on her skateboard with a group of friends just south of 206 th Street in Los Angeles, was shot dead in broad daylight by two men who approached the group and opened fire without saying a word. Two members of the 204 th Street gang were later arrested in the killing.
Green’s death shook the city.
A few weeks after her funeral, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, law enforcement officials and community activists held a news conference and vowed a crackdown on 10 street gangs, six of them Latino. “The 204 th Street and Eastside Torrance gangs have contributed to the rise in racially motivated murders and other crimes,” the mayor’s office said in a press release.
Much of the racially inspired murder and mayhem was and is being directed from far away from the streets and hills of Los Angeles. As the Intelligence Report detailed in the Winter 2006 issue the powerful Mexican Mafia, a prison-based gang, had given the “green light” to the many Latino gangs it controls in Southern California to terrorize and murder black people as part of the effort to drive them out.
In this latest chapter of race and hate in the Southern California sunshine, 51 members of the Azusa 13 street gang have been indicted and convicted since 2011 for “terrorizing” African Americans in Azusa, a city of about 48,000 in the San Gabriel Valley, according to the Los Angeles Times .
On Monday, Santiago “Chico” Rios, a leader of the gang, was sentenced to 19 years and seven months in prison by U.S. District Judge Gary A. Feess, according to the Times , and his hearing impaired son, Louie “Lil Chico” Rios, was given a 10-year sentence.
Both had pleaded guilty to conspiring to attack African Americans and chase them out Azusa, a gang policy established in 1992, the paper said.

Summary: A Latino street gang leader and his son were sentenced in federal court Monday to lengthy prison terms for their role in a years-long campaign of racist terror and ethnic cleansing targeting African Americans in and around Los Angeles. Since at least the mid-1990s, Latino street gangs across Los Angeles County have been targeting, beating and sometimes killing blacks in an attempt to drive them out of the region. Just before Christmas 2006, Cheryl Green, 14, playing on her skateboard with a…


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Hatewatch Headlines 2/17/2017
February 17, 2017
Hatewatch Staff
‘Telephone terrorism’ hits Jewish centers; Supremacist planned Roof-style rampage; Militia vows to protect congressman; and more.


Hatewatch


Hatewatch

Hatewatch
Swastika, Racist Tag Found on Black Family’s Burning Home
May 16, 2017
Bill Morlin
An arsonist with an apparent racist’s agenda is blamed for a nighttime fire at a rural home in upstate New York where a couple and their five children narrowly escaped.


Gun Appreciation Day’s Sponsors Raise a Few Questions

The past few weeks have seen a plethora of over-the-top reactions and a flurry of right-wing freak-outs over new proposals regarding gun control in the wake of the horrific shooting deaths at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in which a lone gunman armed with an semi-automatic rifle shot and killed 20 children and seven adults, including himself.
One of the reactions is the organization of Gun Appreciation Day (GAD), an event scheduled for tomorrow and organized by Political Media, which calls itself a “Republican New Media consulting firm.” GAD has been touted in conservative media outlets and across the extreme-right blogosphere, encouraging supporters to attend local gun shows and go to local shooting ranges and gun stores in support of the Second Amendment.  The website wants to “put the fear of God” into politicians who “infringe” on the Second Amendment and hopes that you’ll donate money to help combat “Big Media and the liberals’ dirty tricks.”
The chairman of GAD, Republican operative Larry Ward , who’s also the CEO of Political Media, even advertised the event on the apocalyptic, anti-gay, anti-Muslim and conspiracy-addled WorldNetDaily website. Ward decries the “liberal gun control crowd” that, according to him, “is using every trick in the book to try and stop us.” One of those alleged tricks, according to Ward, is “to insinuate that our efforts to protect the Second Amendment are racist.”
That’s funny, because as Media Matters noted this morning , GAD’s list of sponsors included American Third Position (A3P), a white nationalist political party. A3P was initially established in 2009 by racist skinheads in California. Attorney William “Bill” Johnson, one of the current leaders, was responsible for pushing the Pace Amendment in California in 1985, which called for the deportation of anyone with “any ascertainable trace of Negro blood.” Kevin MacDonald , one of the other current leaders, is a professor of psychology at California State University, Long Beach who is known for his anti-Semitic views and writings. The A3P website has stated that the party’s goal is to “restore and preserve the legitimacy of White identity, White heritage, and expressions of White interests.”
After the story was posted at Media Matters and then at Huffington Post, the A3P button on the GAD website disappeared (but you can still see a screenshot of it at the MM link above).  GAD then released a statement without specifically mentioning A3P, claiming that the event is “not about racial politics” but rather about gun politics and that they “mistakenly missed” a group that might detract from GAD’s overall message.
GAD may have removed A3P, but a few of its other sponsors might also raise a few eyebrows. They include the hard-right, anti-government and conspiracy-ridden Oath Keepers , a group founded in 2009 for ex-military and law enforcement personnel who pledge to uphold the Constitution against foreign and domestic forces, including the “New World Order,” an imagined cabal that will take over America and enslave its citizens. The core of Oath Keepers beliefs are its “10 orders we will not obey,” which relate directly to Patriot fears of a government conspiracy ,  such as alleged plans by the U.S. government to impose martial law and force Americans into concentration camps. Individual Oath Keepers have also had run-ins with the law (see here , here , and here ).
Another sponsor is Wake Up America, a group committed to “awakening Americans to the threats to our freedoms and liberties.” Its list of experts includes anti-Muslim and nativist activists like Gen. Jerry Boykin, now the executive vice president of the anti-LGBT Family Research Council; Walid Shoebat , who claims to be a former terrorist and who charges that the Muslim Brotherhood is part of a biblical prophecy to bring about the end times and that President Obama is part of the Brotherhood; NumbersUSA, a group that is part of a network of nativist groups created by John Tanton , who has ties to white nationalists; and Michael Peroutka , a lawyer who is a member of the neo-Confederate League of the South, a group that opposes “race-mixing” and claims slavery was “God-ordained.”
Tea Party Nation is also listed as a sponsor. Its president, Judson Phillips, has promoted the “birther” theory that Obama was not born in the U.S., while the group’s bloggers have defended the racist National Origins Act of 1924 in one instance and, in another, lamented that the “White Anglo Saxon Protestant population in America is headed for extinction.”
Perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised by GAD’s seeming contradictions in its stance. After all, one of the memes it’s disseminating features an image of President Ronald Reagan, with a brief quote from the Second Amendment on it. Interesting juxtaposition, since Reagan and three others were shot and injured in 1981 in an assassination attempt. The bullet barely missed the president’s heart and lodged in his lung while his press secretary, James Brady, was permanently paralyzed.
Although Reagan actually loosened restrictions on guns during his administration, once he left office, he supported the Brady Bill, which created a national background check and mandatory waiting period for handgun purchases. It was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1993. Reagan stated in a 1991 op-ed piece in The New York Times that he supported the bill, and that the assassination attempt 10 years earlier may never have happened had the Brady Bill been law then. In 1994, he co-signed a letter along with former presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter that urged Congress to enact a ban on the domestic manufacture of military-style assault weapons, which, they said, was “a matter of vital importance to public safety.

Summary: The past few weeks have seen a plethora of over-the-top reactions and a flurry of right-wing freak-outs over new proposals regarding gun control in the wake of the horrific shooting deaths at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in which a lone gunman armed with an semi-automatic rifle shot and killed 20 children and seven adults, including himself. One of the reactions is the organization of Gun Appreciation Day (GAD), an event scheduled for tomorrow and organized by Political…


Hatewatch

Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions , one of President-elect Donald Trump’s closest advisers during his campaign and his selection for U.S. attorney general, has longstanding and extensive ties to both anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim extremist groups.


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.