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White Supremacist (Domestic Terrorist) in America Have Killed More Americans Than Terrorist - Page 4
It’s more than “a few bad apples”
by Danielle Schulkin

On Sunday morning, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked President Trump’s National Security Advisor, Robert O’Brien, whether he thinks “systemic racism” is a problem in law enforcement agencies in the United States. O’Brien responded: “I don’t think there is systemic racism. I think 99.9 percent of our law enforcement officers are great Americans,” said O’Brien. “But … there’s a few bad apples.” There are two flaws in O’Brien’s response. First, O’Brien ignores the well-documented support by law enforcement officers of alt-right extremist ideology throughout the country. Second, O’Brien misunderstands the nature of systemic racism—a term that means that institutions we have in place produce racially disparate effects on minority populations—in his discussion of individual officers. An FBI intelligence assessment—titled “White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement” and published in 2006 during the administration of President George W. Bush—raised alarm over white supremacist groups’ interest in “infiltrating law enforcement communities or recruiting law enforcement personnel.” The report, based on FBI investigations and open sources, warned, for example, that skinhead groups were actively encouraging their members to become “ghost skins” within law enforcement agencies, a term the report said white supremacists use to describe members who “avoid overt displays of their beliefs to blend into society and covertly advance white supremacist causes.” In 2015, a classified FBI Counterterrorism Policy Guide, obtained by The Intercept, stated that “domestic terrorism investigations focused on militia extremists, white supremacist extremists, and sovereign citizen extremists often have identified active links to law enforcement officers.”
By Vincent Barone

The head of a real-time surveillance app marketed to law enforcement agencies was once involved in white supremacist groups and participated in a synagogue shooting, a new report reveals. Years before Damien Patton became the CEO of Banjo, the startup darling as a teen was affiliated with the Dixie Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the tech blog OneZero first reported. As part of Patton’s previously hidden past, the tech entrepreneur and US Navy veteran was 17 years old and behind the wheel of a car as his passenger shot up the outside of the West End synagogue in a Nashville, Tennessee, suburb in 1990, according to the report. No one was injured during the incident. “We believe that the Blacks and the Jews are taking over America, and it’s our job to take America back for the White race,” Patton testified at a trial for others involved in the incident. “We were out there on the streets causing problems and making the headlines in the news where the older groups like the Klan wasn’t really ever heard of anymore,” he added in his testimony. “And we were going out and causing the problems now.” Patton said in a statement that he no longer holds those views and feels “extreme remorse for” his young adulthood. “[Thirty-two] years ago I was a lost, scared, and vulnerable child. I won’t go into detail, but the reasons I left home at such a young age are unfortunately not unique; I suffered abuse in every form,” Patton said. “I did terrible things and said despicable and hateful things, including to my own Jewish mother, that today I find indefensibly wrong, and feel extreme remorse for. I have spent most of my adult lifetime working to make amends for this shameful period in my life.” Patton’s dark history had largely been concealed thanks to misspellings of his first name in court filings related to the synagogue shooting — meaning his name would have not appeared in any document searches, OneZero reported. The revelations prompted Utah’s attorney general to suspend a $20.7 million contract Banjo had held with the state, allowing it to operate a massive surveillance system to aid police officers, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. The contract gave the company access to state traffic and public safety cameras. In turn, Banjo provides law enforcement with alerts based on social media posts as they pour in from events like crime scenes, fires or other public incidents of interest to police. “Neither the attorney general nor anyone in the Attorney General’s Office were aware of these affiliations or actions,” said Richard Piatt, spokesman for Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes. “They are indefensible. He has said so himself.”
As commander of all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, I fought America’s enemies abroad. Now we must fight violent, hateful ideologies at home.
By John R. Allen

I combatted the threat of foreign terrorism for much of my career, fighting organizations that are grounded in virulent, hateful ideologies, and in many cases operate in a network of independent, loosely connected cells. Violent white-supremacist organizations operate in a similar fashion. Our failure to address these domestic groups and their networks, or to take them as seriously as their foreign counterparts, is costing us lives, diminishing our shared and cherished values, and compromising our credibility and unity as a people. This is happening now, not in some bygone era, and we have to act immediately if we’re to safeguard our republic. Last month, I testified before the House Subcommittee on Intelligence and Counterterrorism about one element of the threat that white-supremacists pose: the risks of anti-Semitic violence and the ongoing threats facing our faith-based communities. Yet as we celebrate Black History Month and reflect on all that it represents, we should recognize the deep roots of racism and prejudice in America. Slavery is America’s original sin, and this “genetic birth defect,” as Representative Hakeem Jeffries recently called it, did not resolve itself with the end of the Civil War, nor with the heroic efforts of the civil-rights movement. The resurgence of white-nationalist ideologies and organizations is rooted in this legacy. For much of the past 50 years, white-supremacist groups were largely relegated to the fringes of American society, where they continued to survive, if not thrive, as a shameful artifact of history. Yet today they are finding a geopolitical landscape that has grown permissive, or even supportive, of their rhetoric and activities—and we need to do more to combat them. The recent decision of the FBI to elevate racially motivated violent extremism to a “national threat priority” is a strong start. These malign actors are terrorists, and that’s what we should call them. What’s more, we need a comprehensive domestic-terrorism law, one that would help bring the full weight of our laws and resources against the unaddressed and violent manifestations of racism that still persist in American culture today. Too many of today’s white-supremacist groups have taken unchecked strides to rebrand themselves as part of the contemporary political mainstream, emphasizing “heritage” or pseudoscience to mask their true, violent intentions. Identifying and prosecuting such organizations for the terrorist groups that they are—just as the international community rightly fought against the Islamic State’s attempts to brand itself as the true voice of Islam—denies these groups the credibility and narrative that they so desperately seek.
By John Bowden

Instances of white nationalist literature or other propaganda found on college campuses nearly doubled last year, according to a new study. Data released to The Hill by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) indicated that white nationalist recruitment on U.S. college campuses is rising, with a total of 433 schools in 43 states and Washington, D.C. reporting incidents in 2019. The report found a total of 630 instances of white nationalist propaganda distribution efforts across the reporting schools, an increase of 96 percent from 320 reported in 2018. The sharpest increase came during the fall semester last year, according to the ADL, which noted a 159 percent increase in incidents reported over the spring semester. Just three groups – the Patriot Front, American Identity Movement and the New Jersey European Heritage Association – are thought to be responsible for around 90 percent of the literature distributed,  the ADL noted. The surge comes as the number of visible public events hosted by white nationalist groups on college campuses dropped between 2018 and 2019, from 95 to 76. “White supremacists see propaganda distribution – including fliering, leafleting and stickering – as a convenient and practically anonymous way to promote their messages of hate and intolerance,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement.
By Ryan W. Miller USA TODAY

Three more suspected neo-Nazis connected to a white nationalist group that reportedly planned to have members at a gun rights rally in Virginia have been arrested, authorities say. Three Georgia men were arrested on charges of conspiracy to commit murder and participating in a criminal street gang as part of the hate group, The Base, according to the Floyd County Police Department. News of the arrests come a day after three other suspected members of The Base were arrested in Maryland on firearms and alien-harboring charges.

The three Georgia men, identified as Luke Austin Lane of Floyd County, Michael Helterbrand of Dalton and Jacob Kaderli of Dacula, were planning to "overthrow the government and murder a Bartow County couple," Floyd County police said in a statement. Lane, who was arrested near his home without incident Wednesday, and Kaderli are being housed in Floyd County, and Helterbrand is to arrive later Friday, police said. Lane was also denied bond Thursday.
By David Shortell, CNN

(CNN) The FBI arrested three alleged members of a white supremacist group early Thursday, including two men accused of possessing a machine gun, over 1,000 rounds of ammunition and body armor parts, according to the Justice Department. The three were arrested at residences in Delaware and Maryland and taken into custody without incident, FBI spokesman Dave Fitz said. The men, who the Justice Department says are members of the international white supremacist group known as The Base, were believed to be planning to attend a pro-gun rally in Virginia's capital of Richmond on Monday that is expected to draw a significant crowd of extremists, according to a law enforcement official. They're charged with multiple firearms and immigration-related offenses and are expected to make an initial appearance in Maryland federal court later Thursday. Brian Mark Lemley Jr., 33, is accused of transporting a machine gun, as well as transporting a firearm and ammunition with intent to commit a felony. Lemley and William Garfield Bilbrough IV, 19, are also accused of transporting and harboring an alien -- 27-year-old Patrik Jordan Mathews, a Canadian citizen and former combat engineer in the Canadian Army Reserve. Like Lemley, Mathews is charged with transporting a firearm and ammunition with intent to commit a felony. A criminal complaint filed in court also charges Mathews with being an alien in possession of a firearm and ammunition.
“And for what? Clickbait headlines, YouTube views?” former video editor Josh Owens writes in New York Times essay
By Igor Derysh

A former Infowars video editor admitted that the outlet fabricated lies about a Muslim community in New York to push host Alex Jones’ threats of sharia law in the United States. Josh Owens, who spent years working for Infowars, wrote an essay for The New York Times Magazine describing how Jones' media empire made up facts to fit its narrative and how employees were subjected to Jones’ angry, violent outbursts.

The day before Jones interviewed then-candidate Donald Trump on his show in 2015, Owens wrote that he traveled to Islamberg, a Muslim community in rural upstate New York, where Jones had instructed him to investigate what he called “the American Caliphate.” Though the Muslims that lived in the community had not been connected to any violence and some had publicly denounced ISIS, Jones wanted to push the far-right rumor that the community was a “potential terrorist-training center,” Owens wrote.

Owens said he and a reporter tried to lie their way into the settlement but were unable to get in after the community had come under threat. Days before the trip, the FBI had issued an alert for a man named Jon Ritzheimer, who had threatened a terrorist attack against Muslims. After a law enforcement agent called to confirm their identities, Jones wanted to spin the incident as “an attempt to intimidate us into silence,” Owens wrote.
Deeply conservative, they organize online and outside the Republican Party apparatus, engaging in more explicit versions of the chest-beating seen at the president’s rallies.
By Astead W. Herndon

GOLDEN VALLEY, Ariz. — Great American Pizza & Subs, on a highway about 100 miles southeast of Las Vegas, was busier and Trumpier than usual. On any given day it serves “M.A.G.A. Subs” and “Liberty Bell Lasagna.” The “Second Amendment” pizza comes “loaded” with pepperoni and sausage. The dining room is covered in regalia praising President Trump.

But this October morning was “Trumpstock,” a small festival celebrating the president. The speakers included the local Republican congressman, Paul Gosar, and lesser-known conservative personalities. There was a fringe 2020 Senate candidate in Arizona who ran a website that published sexually explicit photos of women without their consent; a pro-Trump rapper whose lyrics include a racist slur aimed at Barack Obama; and a North Carolina activist who once said of Muslims, “I will kill every one of them before they get to me.”

All were welcome, except liberals. “They label us white nationalists, or white supremacists,” volunteered Guy Taiho Decker, who drove from California to attend the event. A right-wing protester, he has previously been arrested on charges of making terrorist threats. “There’s no such thing as a white supremacist, just like there’s no such thing as a unicorn,” Mr. Decker said. “We’re patriots.”
by moguldom

African Americans have been hit hardest by the coronavirus, contracting and dying of the virus at disproportionate rates. Now the FBI reports that white supremacists, neo-Nazis and other extremist groups are encouraging followers infected with the coronavirus to spread the deadly disease to Black people, Jews and members of law enforcement. ABC News recently obtained an alert sent by the FBI’s New York office that warned that “members of extremist groups are encouraging one another to spread the virus, if contracted, through bodily fluids and personal interactions.” The alert, which was sent to local police departments, said that extremist groups were directing members to use spray bottles to spread infectious fluids, People reported.

The groups also advised members to leave “saliva on door handles” at FBI offices throughout the country, spit on elevator buttons and spread the virus in “nonwhite neighborhoods,” the brief states according to MSNBC. “White Racially Motivated Violent Extremists have recently commented on the coronavirus stating that it is an ‘OBLIGATION’ to spread it should any of them contract the virus,” the FBI brief said. The discussions between extremist groups took place on a Telegram app channel that focused on “siege culture,” EUR Web reported.

The FBI declined to comment on the alert but issued a statement saying, “FBI field offices routinely share information with their local law enforcement partners to assist in protecting the communities they serve. These products are intended to be informative in nature, and as such, they contain appropriate caveats to describe the confidence in the sourcing of information and the likelihood of the assessment. Additionally, when written at a local level, these products will note that the perspective offered may be limited to the field office’s area of responsibility.”
By Aris Folley

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s New York office recently sent out an alert to local authorities warning of extremist groups it said are encouraging their members to spread the novel coronavirus to police and Jewish people, ABC News reported. According to the news agency, the alert, which was reportedly issued on Thursday, said that “members of extremist groups are encouraging one another to spread the virus, if contracted, through bodily fluids and personal interactions.” The alert reportedly warned that the racist groups were urging their members to go to places where Jewish people “may be congregated, to include markets, political offices, businesses and places of worship.” The alert also reportedly said some white supremacists and neo-Nazis were also urging members who contract the virus to spread the disease to cops by using spray bottles. In a statement to The Hill on Monday, a spokesperson for the FBI said that while the agency’s “standard practice is to not comment on specific intelligence products, FBI field offices routinely share information with their local law enforcement partners to assist in protecting the communities they serve.”
The alert was sent to local police agencies by federal officials.
By Josh Margolin

Racist extremist groups, including neo-Nazis and other white supremacists, are encouraging members who contract novel coronavirus disease to spread the contagion to cops and Jews, according to intelligence gathered by the FBI. In an alert obtained by ABC News, the FBI’s New York office reports that "members of extremist groups are encouraging one another to spread the virus, if contracted, through bodily fluids and personal interactions." The FBI alert, which went out on Thursday, told local police agencies that extremists want their followers to try to use spray bottles to spread bodily fluids to cops on the street. The extremists are also directing followers to spread the disease to Jews by going "any place they may be congregated, to include markets, political offices, businesses and places of worship." The FBI declined to comment on the alert, but issued a statement saying: "FBI field offices routinely share information with their local law enforcement partners to assist in protecting the communities they serve. These products are intended to be informative in nature, and as such, they contain appropriate caveats to describe the confidence in the sourcing of information and the likelihood of the assessment. Additionally, when written at a local level, these products will note that the perspective offered may be limited to the field office’s area of responsibility."
By Billy Perrigo

On March 24, Timothy Wilson, 36, was shot and killed by the FBI as he prepared to attack a hospital in the Kansas City area where patients with the coronavirus were being treated. The FBI had previously identified Wilson as a “potentially violent extremist” who had considered attacking a mosque, a synagogue, and a school with a large number of black students before settling on the hospital. He died in a shootout when federal officers tried to arrest him. Hours before his death, Wilson had posted anti-Semitic messages on two white supremacist groups on the messaging app Telegram.

As COVID-19 continues to spread around the world, white supremacists are seizing upon it as a new and powerful addition to their arsenal. Their messaging often happens on Telegram, which over the last year has become a staging ground for extremist groups, according to the Anti Defamation League. Telegram channels associated with white supremacy and racism grew by more than 6,000 users over the month of March, according to data shared exclusively with TIME by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based think tank that monitors extremism and disinformation. One white supremacist channel specifically focused on messaging related to COVID-19 grew its user base from just 300 users to 2,700 in that month alone — a growth of 800%.
A Muslim, a black woman, and a refugee, Ilhan Omar faces Islamophobia, racism, misogyny, and anti-immigration strains in American culture.
By Emily Stewart

Want to know how awful racism can still be in America? Look no further than the vitriol directed at Ilhan Omar. Take, for example, the events of just the past several days. Last week, Twitter finally suspended the account of one of Omar’s Republican challengers, Danielle Stella, after she called for the congresswoman to be tried for treason and hanged if an unproven conspiracy theory that Omar gave sensitive information to Iran were confirmed. And Tuesday, the Tampa Bay Times reported that the campaign of Republican George Buck, a challenger to Democratic Rep. Charlie Crist in Florida, sent out a fundraising letter accusing Omar of secretly working for Qatar and reading, “We should hang these traitors where they stand.”

Racist threats and attacks are nothing new, but against Omar, they’re on overdrive. It’s a depressing reversal from the triumph of the Minnesota Democrat’s 2018 watershed victory: Omar is a Somali refugee, and she and Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib were the first two Muslim women to be elected to the United States Congress. “I stand here before you tonight as your congresswoman-elect with many firsts behind my name,” Omar said the night of her election. “The first woman of color to represent our state in Congress. The first woman to wear a hijab. The first refugee ever elected to Congress. And one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress.”
An advocacy group report criticises Alec, a group which brings together conservative lawmakers and corporate interests
By Ed Pilkington in New York

Alec, the rightwing network that brings conservative lawmakers together with corporate lobbyists to create model legislation that is cloned across the US, has been accused of spreading racist and white supremacist policies targeted at minority communities.A report published on Tuesday by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and other advocacy groups charges Alec with propagating white supremacy. In one of the sharpest criticisms yet levelled at the controversial “bill mill”, the authors warn that “conservative and corporate interests have captured our political process to harness profit, further entrench white supremacy in the law, and target the safety, human rights and self-governance of marginalised communities”.

The publication comes on the eve of the latest gathering of Alec, officially known as the American Legislative Exchange Council, which will be attended by hundreds of largely Republican state-level legislators and their big business allies. Rightwing taskforce secretly approves anti-environment resolutions. The four-day States & Nation Policy Summit will open at a resort in Scottsdale, Arizona, on Wednesday with an agenda touching on several of Alec’s core principles including “election integrity”, privatisation of education and support for homeschooling, and protection for pharmaceutical companies. Watchdogs have also learned of a dinner to be held on Wednesday and jointly hosted by Alec and the Alliance Defending Freedom, an anti-LGBT coalition devoted to re-criminalising homosexuality in the US in the name of Christianity.

The Alec summit will be picketed by protesters convened by organisations at the forefront of the race equality movement such as Black Lives Matter and Puente Arizona. The demonstrators will seek to highlight one of the most contentious legislative moves made by Alec: 2010 Arizona law SB1070, which heralded the most extreme crackdown on undocumented migrants then seen in the US under a model bill drafted at an Alec conference the previous year.
By Joel Rose

For almost three decades, Jared Taylor has been publishing his ideas about race at the American Renaissance magazine and now at a website called AmRen, which is considered a mouthpiece for white supremacist ideology. "The races are not identical and equivalent," says Taylor, who calls himself a "race realist" and rejects the white supremacist label. "There are patterns of difference. But this is now something that's considered a huge, hateful taboo in the United States."

The website is not well-known outside white nationalist circles — but it found an audience in White House adviser Stephen Miller. Miller has recommended articles on AmRen and another white nationalist site called VDARE. We know this because the Southern Poverty Law Center has uncovered hundreds of emails that Miller wrote to a reporter at Breitbart News before he worked in the White House.

Civil rights activists and more than 100 members of Congress — all Democrats — have called for Miller's resignation since the publication of the emails. But the White House is standing behind him. And Republicans have been largely silent. Critics say that this suggests the line of what's acceptable in public discourse has shifted. The latest batch of emails, released by the SPLC on Monday, shows Miller pushing a supposed link between immigrants and rising crime, an idea that has been debunked. Miller also flagged a story on AmRen written by Taylor, according to the Breitbart reporter, Katie McHugh.

Taylor frequently promotes ideas that are widely considered racist and cloaks them in the language of science. For example, he talks about black people having higher levels of testosterone and therefore being predisposed to commit more violent crimes — an idea that simply has no scientific support. In another email to McHugh, Miller suggested that she write about The Camp of the Saints, a French novel from the 1970s that depicts the destruction of Western civilization by immigrants. It has become a key inspiration in white nationalist circles.

To Miller's critics, the leaked emails — and the muted reaction on the right — suggest that the political dynamic around race and immigration has shifted to include ideas that were once beyond the pale.
Richard Holzer was arrested Friday after undercover agents brought him supposed explosives

Jason Wilson

The FBI says it has arrested a white supremacist who was planning an attack on a Colorado synagogue, describing the plan as “domestic terrorism”. Richard Holzer, 27, of Pueblo, Colorado, is accused of plotting to attack the city’s Temple Emanuel synagogue. His co-conspirators included two undercover (UC) FBI agents. Holzer allegedly expressed a desire to “get that place off the map”, and was not concerned if anyone would be hurt in the attack because they “would be Jews”. He allegedly said that the bombing would be “a move for our race”. Holzer was arrested on 1 November in Pueblo, after he had gone to a motel with two undercover agents to pick up explosives.

Holzer allegedly described the pipe bombs and sticks of dynamite proffered by the agents – actually dummies manufactured by the FBI at Quantico – as “absolutely gorgeous” and said they should go ahead with the attack overnight to avoid police. Earlier in the evening, he had displayed a Nazi armband and produced a copy of Adolf Hitler’s book Mein Kampf, a mask, and a knife from a backpack, according to authorities.

In a press conference Monday afternoon, Dean Phillips, the special agent in charge of the FBI in Colorado, said that the agency had started investigating Holzer after receiving a tip in September about his social media behavior. Then followed more than a month in which FBI agents posing as fellow white supremacists led Holzer to reveal the extent of his violent beliefs and fantasies.

Holzer made contact on Facebook with an FBI Online Covert Employee (OCE) who was posing as a female supporter of white supremacy in late September. He allegedly sent pictures of himself adorned with white supremacist symbols, a video of him wielding a machete, photos of him apparently urinating on a Jewish center, and another video of him wielding a knife, saying “fuck antifa”. more...
“The reality is this is someone who said white supremacy is a hoax and why does Fox allow him to still be here in the first place?”
by Justin Baragona

Democratic National Committee Vice Chairman Michael Blake tore into Fox News and host Tucker Carlson during a Tuesday morning Fox News interview, directly asking anchor Bill Hemmer why the network still employs Carlson following his infamous claim that white supremacy is a “hoax.”

Brought on to discuss Carlson’s Monday night prediction that former first lady Michelle Obama will eventually be the Democratic presidential nominee, Blake took the opportunity to hijack the goofy premise and blast both the network and Carlson.

“She is not running,” he asserted. “But the core question is why the hell does Tucker Carlson still have a job here in the first place? The reality is this is someone who said white supremacy is a hoax and why does Fox allow him to still be here in the first place?”

Earlier this year and mere days after a white supremacist deliberately targeted Mexicans in the El Paso mass shooting that left 22 dead, Carlson took to his primetime show to claim white supremacy is “not a real problem” and a “hoax,” prompting calls for his firing.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo called for an outside monitor after a series of racist incidents that has left Syracuse University besieged.
By Aaron Randle and Jesse McKinley

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — It was an ordinary cram session, around midnight, when the screed appeared on students’ phones. A racist manifesto, sent to a small clutch of people sitting at a Syracuse University library on Tuesday morning, warned of “the great replacement,” a right-wing conspiracy theory that predicts white genocide at the hands of minority groups. It was just the latest example of racist activity that has left the private university besieged, with officials confronted by student sit-ins and harsh critiques from faculty members and federal agents crawling the campus.

The incidents, which began less than two weeks ago, have included racist graffiti, swastikas and hate speech hurled at black and Asian students. On Sunday, the university suspended all social activities at fraternities for the rest of the semester, after a group of students, including members of one fraternity, accosted a female African-American student on Saturday night and used a racial slur.

But Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Tuesday that the university’s response was not enough. He called on its board of trustees to hire an independent monitor to investigate, harshly criticizing the chancellor, Kent D. Syverud, and other officials for their reaction to the crisis. “They have not been handled in a manner that reflects this state’s aggressive opposition to such odious, reckless, reprehensible behavior,” the governor said of the racist incidents. “That these actions should happen on the campus of a leading New York university makes this situation even worse.”

The sudden spasm of hate speech and racist vandalism has shattered the ordinary rituals of autumn, including basketball and football games, and left many of the roughly 22,500 students on campus frightened for both their safety and the reputation of the university itself. On campus, the disruption was noticeable. Teachers canceled class. Students, afraid to leave their dorm rooms, phoned parents asking to come home. Inside the esteemed S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, typically bustling with students, hallways were largely empty.

“This triggered a panic,” said Chandler Plante, a third-year magazine journalism major. “We can’t sleep. We can’t think.” On Tuesday, state and federal law enforcement officials descended on the university, just east of downtown, looking for evidence as to who had sent the manifesto, an anti-Muslim screed previously circulated by the suspect accused of a mass killing at two New Zealand mosques in March. The manifesto was posted online late Monday night on a forum geared to those interested in Greek life at Syracuse University, according to the city’s police chief, and was then sent or shared via a file-transfer service to the phones of several students who were inside Bird Library. Full Story
by Lulu Garcia-Navarro

Senior White House adviser Stephen Miller is an immigration hard-liner. He engineered the Trump administration's family-separation policy and its travel ban on people from some Muslim-majority countries. But last week, the Southern Poverty Law Center detailed leaked emails in which it says Miller encouraged far-right website Breitbart to promote white supremacist ideas. In one message, Miller references a book of fiction: "Someone should point out the parallels to Camp of the Saints."

The Camp of the Saints is a 1973 French novel by Jean Raspail that has become a key inspiration within white nationalist circles. It portrays a dystopia, or perhaps an apocalypse: a flotilla of South Asian people who invade France and effectively overthrow Western society. "The key themes are actually white supremacy and the end of white civilization as the West knows it — infestation, invasion, hordes of nameless, faceless migrants who come to indeed invade the West and bring about its end," says Chelsea Stieber, professor of French and Francophone studies at Catholic University of America.

Stieber says she became interested in the novel after she heard echoes of its rhetoric – its "not-normal political discourse" — in President Trump's inaugural address. "I noticed a language that I was intimately familiar with because I study it — because I worked on far-right French nationalism and its literature and language for a long time," she says. "And I was sort of blown away. The alarm bells started going off." Stieber teaches the book to students, who she says are generally "overwhelmed" by its content.

"The book itself is, I mean, from the pedagogic point of view, very effective because it performs the effect of infestation with its language and with its figures of style, repetition, metaphor," she says. "And so students feel quite invaded by the language — and it is an emotional and visceral reaction. ... To study it is so important to understand how it could quite literally infest a mind, a person to believe things." In an essay for the publication Africa Is a Country, Stieber argues that everyone should read the book to understand how a racist ideology can take hold in language and narrative. But she does caution everyone to understand that it is fiction based on mistaken premises. Full Story
A report by the Southern Poverty Law Center provides a window into Miller’s thinking on immigration.
By Nicole Narea

Hundreds of private emails White House senior adviser Stephen Miller sent to a former Breitbart editor show that he recommended white nationalist websites and literature and upheld the 1920s Coolidge administration as a model for setting highly restrictive immigration policies, according to a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The SPLC’s report draws on more than 900 emails, about 80 percent of which touched on the issues of either immigration or race, that Miller exchanged with former Breitbart editor Katie McHugh from March 4, 2015, to June 27, 2016, while he was still an aide for then-US Sen. Jeff Sessions. They illuminate the philosophy guiding Miller, who is largely regarded as the architect of the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policy.

In an October 23, 2015, email, Miller forwarded McHugh a story from the website VDare, published by Peter Brimelow, who has long been allied with prominent figures in the white nationalist far-right movement. As Jane Coaston explained for Vox, “VDare’s perception of itself as focused on ‘just asking questions’ and merely ‘politically incorrect’ is belied by the website itself and its stable of contributors, who include some of the most visible white nationalists in the movement today.” Miller cites the VDare story, which summarizes instances in which the US offered citizens of certain countries temporary protections, as a warning of what could happen if Mexicans displaced by Hurricane Patricia in 2015 were to flee to the US southern border.

In a September 6, 2015, email, Miller recommended a racist 1973 dystopian novel, The Camp of The Saints, which has been upheld by nativists and the alt-right as a cautionary tale about the effects of immigration. The book portrays brown-skinned immigrants from India as savages who eat their own feces and invade the “white world” of Europe.

“[Y]ou see the Pope saying west must, in effect, get rid of borders,” Miller wrote to McHugh. “Someone should point out the parallels to Camp of the Saints.” Breitbart later ran a story doing just that. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, has cited the book repeatedly, and Radix, a website founded by leading white nationalist Richard Spencer, has praised it as an exaggerated “distillation and condensation of observable reality.” The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.

In other emails, Miller also repeatedly touted the immigration policies of former President Calvin Coolidge, who signed one of the most restrictive immigration laws in US history, the Immigration Act of 1924. The law severely limited immigration of nonwhites from outside Northern Europe by imposing quotas that tied the number of immigrants admitted from any country to past census counts of how many immigrants of their nationality were already living in the US. “America must be kept American,” Coolidge wrote at the time. “For this purpose, it is necessary to continue a policy of restricted immigration.” Full Story
The recording shows once again that the racism and anti-Semitism of the “alt-right” or “dissident right” is just racism and anti-Semitism.
By Jane Coaston

In audio first put online by right-wing pundit and provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos on Saturday, white nationalist Richard Spencer can allegedly be heard ranting about Jewish people and mixed-race people. The audio — purportedly from an emergency meeting that took place on August 13, 2017, the day after the far-right “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, disintegrated into violence, resulting in the murder of a counterprotester named Heather Heyer — features Spencer screaming racist and anti-Semitic slurs he has generally avoided using in public in an effort to more politely argue for “the creation of a White Ethno-State.”

Spencer is perhaps the most prominent and arguably the most successful of the so-called “alt-right” white nationalist activists attempting to inject overtly racist ideas into mainstream political thought. In fact, Spencer can be credited (alongside Peter Brimelow and Paul Gottfried) with inventing the term “alt-right,” resulting in the magazine Alternative Right in 2010. I emailed Spencer for comment and will update if I hear back.

   Milo just uploaded leaked audio of Richard Spencer reacting to the death of Heather Heyer and the negative press it did to his movement. Just in case there was any question of the so-called "dapper white nationalist" being a raged fuelled hateful monster.

   Explicit warning. pic.twitter.com/KpVk2fLYSu
   — BAILEY, THE LIBTARDTARIAN (@atheist_cvnt) November 4, 2019

By appearing polite and somewhat well dressed (with multiple ill-fitting waistcoats, for example) and using watered-down terminology like “peaceful ethnic cleansing,” the “self-styled prophet” of the alt-right has waged a media campaign for the last several years to build his own reputation and that of his movement, using Donald Trump’s campaign as a vehicle to make the case for a seemingly kinder, gentler white nationalism.

In interviews Spencer and other white nationalists give to mainstream audiences (like those watching him on CNN and on college campuses), white nationalism is simply a civil rights movement for white people, taking a stand for white Americans in need of defending — at the very least, a differing viewpoint worthy of contemplation and analysis.

That was a lie, as has been blatantly obvious for more than a decade. But now, the mask — or perhaps more aptly, the hood — has dropped, hopefully for good. Full Story
RealClearPolitics has carefully cultivated a non-partisan image—while in the shadows its parent company pushes images of killer Clintons and a freedom-loving Kremlin.
By Kevin Poulsen

The company behind the non-partisan news site RealClearPolitics has been secretly running a Facebook page filled with far-right memes and Islamophobic smears, The Daily Beast has learned. Called “Conservative Country,” the Facebook page was founded in 2014 and now boasts nearly 800,000 followers for its mix of Donald Trump hagiography and ultra-conservative memes. One recent post showed a man training two assault rifles at a closed door with the caption “Just sitting here waiting on Beto.”

Others wink at right-wing conspiracy theories about Barack Obama’s “ties to Islam” or the Clintons having their enemies killed, or portray Muslim members of Congress as terrorist infiltrators. The page is effusive with praise for Vladimir Putin, and one post portrays Russia as the last bastion of freedom in Europe. It’s a far cry from the usual fare on RealClearPolitics. Founded in 2000, the site was an early online aggregator of political news, curating links to widely read politics stories and opinion articles in other major outlets. The site has become synonymous with its polling aggregator, which is regularly cited by news organizations on both sides of the aisle as an objective metric of major political races.

In recent years, the site has expanded to cover health care, finance, foreign policy, and more. There’s no hint of Conservative Country’s provenance on its Facebook “about” page, which reads in total, “Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” (It’s an apocryphal quote attributed to George Washington.) But in 2017 Conservative Country was linked as the official Facebook page for a now defunct political news site using the same name and logo, ConservativeCountry.net. more...
“The future does not belong to globalists. The future belongs to patriots,” the president declared.
By Justin Baragona

President Donald Trump made winking overtures to right-wing nationalism during his Tuesday speech before the United Nations General Assembly, embracing rhetoric about “globalism” and the fear of allowing certain people to “replace” Western cultural heritage. During an otherwise tepid speech—in both delivery and content—Trump boasted about the amount his administration has spent on the U.S. military, adding that he has kept America as the “most powerful nation” on earth. “Americans know that in a world where others seek conquest and domination, our nation must be strong in wealth, in might, and in spirit,” Trump stated.

“That is why the United States vigorously defends the traditions and customs that have made us who we are.” From there, the president said that each country has its own “cherished history, culture and heritage” before insisting—in an echoing of right-wing fears about multiculturalism—that “patriots” must protect their nations’ identities. “The free world must embrace its national foundations,” Trump declared. “It must not attempt to erase them or replace them. Looking around, and all over this large, magnificent planet, the truth is plain to see. If you want freedom, take pride in your country. If you want democracy, hold on to your sovereignty. And if you want peace, love your nation.” more...
Recent mass shootings have "galvanized the Department of Homeland Security to expand its counterterrorism mission focus beyond terrorists operating aboard," acting DHS Sec. Kevin McAleenan.
By Pete Williams

For the first time since it was formed after the 9/11 attacks, the Department of Homeland Security is adding white supremacist violence to its list of priority threats in a revised counterterrorism strategy issued Friday. "The continuing menace of racially based violent extremism, particularly white supremacist extremism, is an abhorrent affront to our nation, the struggle and unity of its diverse population, and the core values of both our society and our department," said Kevin McAleenan, the acting Homeland secretary, in a speech at the Brookings Institute in Washington.

DHS is stepping up its focus on what McAleenan called "targeted violence," in which an attacker selects the target in advance, driven by hate. Racism and anti-Semitism have fueled recent attacks on African-American churches, synagogues, and public places in California and Texas, he said. The shooting at the Walmart in El Paso hit DHS particularly hard. Six of the victims were family members of DHS employees. "The majority of our El Paso team, working to protect our nation, uphold the rule of law, and care for vulnerable migrants arriving at our border is Hispanic," he said.

While protecting the nation from foreign-inspired or directed terror attacks remains a core Homeland Security mission, McAleenan said recent mass shootings have "galvanized the Department of Homeland Security to expand its counterterrorism mission focus beyond terrorists operating aboard, to include those radicalized to violence within our borders by violent extremists of any ideology." The revised strategy said DHS would seek to better analyze the nature and extent of the domestic terror threat and share information with local law enforcement to help prevent attacks. The government will also do more to discourage technology companies from hosting websites that spread radical hate. DHS will also encourage counter-messaging campaigns "seeking to steer individuals away from messages of violence," according to the new strategy document. And DHS will provide more active shooter training to local law enforcement agencies to help them respond to gun violence. more...  
A new strategy for the first time places a major priority on domestic terrorism, especially of the extreme right. Now the agency has to actually tackle the problem.
By Kathy Gilsinan

Kevin McAleenan took the El Paso shooting personally. The acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security had visited the city more than a dozen times. He recalled in an interview yesterday that among his first thoughts were the safety of the DHS workforce, which numbers some 4,000 people there, many of them Hispanic. The shooter’s motivation quickly became clear, with 22 people dead in a Walmart and an online manifesto attributed to the shooter citing an “invasion” of immigrants. “This,” McAleenan recalls thinking, “was an attack on all of us, on our family.”

Speaking to The Atlantic more than six weeks after the attack, he had an “El Paso Strong” bracelet on his wrist. The El Paso shooting figures into a new strategy to counter terrorism and “targeted violence” that the Department of Homeland Security will release today, which The Atlantic obtained and describes here for the first time. The document dwells at length on the threat of white supremacists specifically, which is surprising coming from President Donald Trump’s administration, given that one of its first counterterrorism policies was to try to ban citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries.

Trump has also pushed for a border wall, which he has said will help keep out terrorists, even though most fatal terrorist attacks in the United States in recent years have been carried out by U.S. citizens or permanent residents. The DHS document is an acknowledgment that, nearly 20 years after 9/11, the new terrorist threat comes largely from within—and not as much from jihadists as from the extreme right. The department is clearly trying to send a message that it takes the threat of violent white nationalists seriously, and McAleenan said that when leadership lays out its goals, bureaucracies tend to move. If DHS get everything it wants, it will have more resources to analyze the changing nature of terrorism in the U.S.; improve information-sharing with local law enforcement; and provide training to communities to prevent or respond to attacks, including through active-shooter drills and security in schools, McAleenan told me.

He said the department’s existing resources can be redistributed to better coordinate and focus the sprawling counterterrorism bureaucracy on a wide range of threats, from online radicalization to the movement of weapons of mass destruction. But as with any plan, this one faces obstacles to implementation. The fact that many of the recommendations in the document call for further study indicates just how poorly the federal government understands the problem of white-supremacist violence and its scope. Public statistics show that white supremacists now represent the deadliest extremists in the United States—for instance, the Anti-Defamation League has reported that last year, white supremacists perpetrated 39 of 50 domestic extremism-related killings in the United States. (The same year saw only one death linked to jihadist terrorism in the U.S.) Yet at the federal level, statistics are imperfect and unevenly reported; the ADL also notes that more than 1,000 law-enforcement agencies didn’t report their data on hate crimes to the FBI, leaving huge gaps in the nationwide picture. more...
By Molly Olmstead

An alleged white supremacist has been charged with targeting a black Charlottesville, Virginia, activist running for city council with violent, racist threats, authorities said Wednesday. Those threats led the activist, a deacon and co-founder of Charlottesville’s Black Lives Matter chapter, to drop his campaign, according to prosecutors. Daniel McMahon, a 31-year-old resident of Brandon, Florida, was a known figure in hateful white supremacist circles on social media, according to the Associated Press. McMahon went by the alias “Jack Corbin” and wrote posts on the social media platform Gab that were shared by the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting suspect, the AP reported. His alleged victim, who was named only with initials in the court filings, was identified by the Daily Progress as activist Don Gathers. Gathers, a deacon in a Baptist church and an activist for racial justice, had announced in January a plan to run for city council on a platform to help the city “heal” after the deadly “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in 2017. But the next day, when Gathers was scheduled to formally announce his campaign, he instead told a crowd of supporters that he had decided to delay his run for office, citing a doctor’s warning that he was still recovering from a heart attack the previous fall. That night, he also resigned from the Civilian Police Review Board, according to the Daily Progress. more...  
By Caitlin Gibson

At first, it wasn’t obvious that anything was amiss. Kids are naturally curious about the complicated world around them, so Joanna Schroeder wasn’t surprised when her 11- and 14-year-old boys recently started asking questions about timely topics such as cultural appropriation and transgender rights. But she sensed something off about the way they framed their questions, she says — tinged with a bias that didn’t reflect their family’s progressive values. She heard one of her sons use the word “triggered” in a sarcastic, mocking tone. And there was the time Schroeder watched as her son scrolled through the “Explore” screen on his Instagram account and she caught a glimpse of a meme depicting Adolf Hitler. Schroeder, a writer and editor in Southern California, started paying closer attention, talking to her boys about what they’d encountered online.

Then, after her kids were in bed one night last month, she opened Twitter and began to type. “Do you have white teenage sons?” she wrote. “Listen up.” In a series of tweets, Schroeder described the onslaught of racist, sexist and homophobic memes that had inundated her kids’ social media accounts unbidden, and the way those memes — packaged as irreverent, “edgy” humor — can indoctrinate children into the world of alt-right extremism and white supremacy. She didn’t know whether anyone would pay attention to her warning. But by the time she awoke the next morning, her thread had gone viral; as of Sept. 16, it had been retweeted more than 81,000 times and liked more than 180,000 times. Over the following days, Schroeder’s inbox filled with messages from other parents who were deeply concerned about what their own kids were seeing and sharing online. “It just exploded, it hit a nerve,” she says of her message. “I realized, okay, there are other people who are also seeing this.”

Over recent years, white-supremacist and alt-right groups have steadily emerged from the shadows — marching with torches through the streets Charlottesville, clashing with counterprotesters in Portland, Ore., papering school campuses with racist fliers. In June, the Anti-Defamation League reported that white-supremacist recruitment efforts on college campuses had increased for the third straight year, with more than 313 cases of white-supremacist propaganda recorded between September 2018 and May 2019. This marked a 7 percent increase over the previous academic year, which saw 292 incidents of extremist propaganda, according to the ADL. As extremist groups have grown increasingly visible in the physical world, their influence over malleable young minds in the digital realm has become a particularly urgent concern for parents. A barrage of recent reports has revealed how online platforms popular with kids (YouTube, iFunny, Instagram, Reddit and multiplayer video games, among others) are used as tools for extremists looking to recruit. Earlier this year, a viral essay in Washingtonian magazine — written by an anonymous mother who chronicled a harrowing, year-long struggle to reclaim her teenage son from the grips of alt-right extremists who had befriended him online — sparked a flurry of passionate discussions and debates among parents across social media. more...  
Five suspects arrested since Carlson's declaration
Written by Eric Kleefeld

Fox News host Tucker Carlson has insisted that white supremacist violence is not a pressing issue in America. But such a declaration doesn’t seem to have stopped actual white supremacists in several instances of apparent domestic terror plots that have been thwarted by authorities in just the past two weeks. On the August 6 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight — broadcast just days after a suspected gunman killed 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso, TX, and after the gunman allegedly posted a white nationalist manifesto online — Carlson declared that it was a “lie” that white supremacy is even an urgent problem in America. “If you were to assemble a list, a hierarchy of concerns of problems this country faces, where would white supremacy be on the list?” Carlson asked rhetorically. “Right up there with Russia, probably. … Just like the Russia hoax, it's a conspiracy theory used to divide the country and keep a hold on power. That's exactly what's going on.” Since that statement, however, multiple suspects have been arrested on charges related to plotting attacks motivated by white nationalism: more...  
By Chris Joyner Rosalind Bentley, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The rally is effectively over. Participants are mainly walking around chanting “USA.” They have the space at the Dahlonega square for about another 30 minutes. Some speakers didn’t show. Principal organizer Chester Doles was on the mic for a second time. The rally is effectively over. Participants are mainly walking around chanting “USA.” They have the space at the Dahlonega square for about another 30 minutes. Some speakers didn’t show. Principal organizer Chester Doles was on the mic for a second time. - Chris Joyner. Here are the live updates from our reporters at the rally today in Dahlonega. Return to AJC.com later today for a recap story and more photos. The rally is effectively over. Participants are mainly walking around chanting “USA.” They have the space at the Dahlonega square for about another 30 minutes. Some speakers didn’t show. Principal organizer Chester Doles was on the mic for a second time. - Chris Joyner. "Get hate off our streets" was one of several messages written by Dahlonega residents last night in advance of the rally. (Photo: Rosalind Bentley/AJC). A little more than 100 counterprotesters — which would be about twice the number of rally attendees — were chanting “Whose streets? Our streets!” and “No Nazis, no KKK, no fascist USA!” - Rosalind Bentley. more...  
Latest exposé of Jerry Falwell Jr. won't touch him, as long as he keeps pushing racism, sexism and homophobia
By Amanda Marcotte

On Monday morning, Politico published a major exposé on Jerry Falwell Jr., the religious right's most influential supporter of Donald Trump and the president of Liberty University, an evangelical institution formed by his father, Southern Baptist minister Jerry Falwell. Writer Brandon Ambrosino paints a damning picture of the younger Falwell as a man unrestrained by his own religion's teachings on sexual morality or any other kind of Christian ethics. The laundry list of malfeasance and inappropriate behavior is impressive, "from partying at nightclubs, to graphically discussing his sex life with employees, to electioneering" and "directing university resources into projects and real estate deals in which his friends and family have stood to make personal financial gains."

The most titillating story, previously reported by the Miami Herald, concerns the fact that Falwell and his wife, Becki, seem to have have an interesting sex life involving sharing naked photos with other men — men who, likely not coincidentally, enjoy healthy levels of financial assistance from the Falwells and Liberty University. For instance, Politico reports that Falwell sent pictures of his wife in "a French maid costume" to their personal trainer, Ben Crosswhite. They also used Liberty funds to set Crosswhite up as the owner of a lucrative gym. There's a lot more of this sort of thing, making it quite clear that Falwell is a first-rate hypocrite who poorly hides a love of power, luxury and sexual freedom behind a facade of Christian piety. But it's foolish to imagine that any of this will affect Falwell's political power or standing with the larger white evangelical community.

The pretense that the religious right was motivated by faith and morality was dropped — or should have been — when white evangelicals flocked to vote for Trump in greater numbers than they did for George W. Bush, who if he was convincing about little else, was convincingly a man of faith. Here's the thing: The real purpose of the Christian conservative movement is to uphold white supremacy and patriarchy, full stop. As long as Falwell Jr. keeps that up — as his father did before him — his flock will stick with him just as they've stuck with Trump, a thrice-married chronic adulterer who has bragged about sexual assault on tape. The biggest flaw in Ambrosino's otherwise excellent reporting is that his sources repeatedly describe Falwell Jr.'s behavior as a departure from the traditional Christian ethics that his father supposedly stood for. The elder Falwell, who died in 2007, is praised by anonymous Liberty University employees as "a respectable, honest, decent, hardworking man" and as a man who was motivated by "a higher calling." As anyone who really understands the history of the Christian right will agree, this is complete nonsense. The elder Jerry Falwell was a bigot through and through, and his version of Christianity was primarily, if not solely, about rationalizing a white supremacist, misogynistic and homophobic worldview. more...  
The defence of Christian identity is now central to the far Right’s misogynistic and racist campaigns, and some religious leaders are colluding.
Over recent years, themes of Christian identity and the defence of the traditional family and heterosexual norms have become central to contemporary far-right politics as well as the intellectual currents associated with the New Right. But to fully understand the depth of today’s hard Right assault on sexual minorities and women, first we need to understand how far-right culture wars have been nurtured by Islamophobia, militarism and the war on terror.

Just as in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States it was the Vietnam War that provided the fuel and frame of reference for the growth of White Power, the war and militarism unleashed since 2001 has provided the combusting force for racism, Islamophobia and misogyny in Europe today. Following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, and Europe’s cooperation with the invasions of first Afghanistan and then Iraq that followed, a anti-multiculturalism discourse has become deeply rooted in European culture.  

It may be ironic to think of this today, but in the initial stages of the war on terror, when world leaders like Tony Blair were justifying the invasion of Afghanistan as a ‘humanitarian intervention’ to liberate veiled Muslim women, the message of extreme-right anti-immigration movements was a mirror of the mainstream view that Islam posed a threat to women, gay rights and a secular order. To drive that point home, in more overtly racist terms of course, far-right posters, videos and social media campaigns used images of minarets as bayonets and the wombs of burqa-clad Muslim women as hand grenades ready to explode. Now, the cultural references and symbols of the racist Right are changing.

While some anti-immigration politicians still purport to defend secular values, the far-right’s primary framework is as protectors of religion – that is, of course, if the religion under threat is fundamentalist and Christian, and perceived to be white. The most successful hard right political crusaders against Islam and Muslims, such as Matteo Salvini in Italy and Viktor Orbán in Hungary, claim to be staunch defenders of Europe’s Christian tradition. For some, like President Donald Trump’s former advisor Steve Bannon, who is (not very successfully) attempting to introduce ‘gladiator schools’ for right-wing ‘cultural warriors’ into Europe, it’s Europe’s Judeo-Christian tradition that is emphasised. more...
By Steven Petrow

HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. — I can only guess that, in the deep silence of the night, a small caravan of cars left Pelham, N.C., home of one of the largest Ku Klux Klan groups in the country, and drove the 40-some miles to Hillsborough, where I’ve lived for six years. They arrived in the darkest hours of Saturday morning, fulfilling their promise to return to our town after a highly visible protest on Aug. 24. Driving up and down our sleepy streets, the Klansmen left their calling cards in mailboxes and on front stoops: “The clock is ticking, Wake Up White America. Join the Klan & Save Our Land,” read one flier. “AIDS Cures Fags. Gods Laws! Have You Forgotten!” said another.

The citizens of Hillsborough awoke to what one of my neighbors called a “paper bombing.” Our town was ready. By first light, the Nextdoor email group was abuzz with news of the hateful fliers as well as final details about the March for a Hate-Free Hillsborough scheduled for noon that day. The Klan’s protest the week before, replete with white robes and wizard hats, hadn’t come out of the blue. For several years now we’ve been targeted by numerous Confederate-flag-waving protests, challenging the county’s banning of “Rebel” symbols in the schools, the removal of the words “Confederate Memorial" from the history museum, as well as a town decision to limit the size of flags after an enormous and intimidating Confederate flag had been hoisted on nearby U.S. 70. Two community organizations, Hillsborough Progressives Taking Action and the Hate-Free Schools Coalition, jumped into action, creating a flier for the anti-hate march that was posted on message boards and handed out by the light of day, calling for Hillsboroughians “to organize in bold opposition to this hate, violence, and intimation.” more..
The blundering conservative operative faces one charge of unlawfully selling securities in California.
By Will Sommer

Conservative operative Jacob Wohl is wanted on a felony arrest warrant in California, a development that could hamper his spree of bizarre, blundering political schemes. Wohl and former business partner Matthew Johnson were both charged with the unlawful sale of securities in a Riverside Superior Court criminal complaint filed on Aug. 19. Wohl has not been arrested yet on the charge, according to the court docket. Prosecutors recommended $5,000 bonds for both Wohl and Johnson. The allegation that Wohl and Johnson unlawfully sold securities centers on one of Wohl’s financial companies, Montgomery Assets. A warrant application filed by the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office notes that the three-year statute of limitations on the case was set to expire at the end of August 2019, meaning prosecutors had to file by the end of last month if they wanted to pursue charges. “In 2016 Jacob Wohl and Matthew Johnson represented themselves as members of a company called Montgomery Assets,” the warrant application reads. “On July 27, 2016 through August 27, 2016 Jacob Wohl and Matthew Johnson offered for sale unqualified securities in violation of California Corporations Code 25110 which has a three year statute of limitations and must be tolled by the issuance of an arrest warrant.”
During a period of depression, I was strangely drawn by the oratory of British polemecist Jonathan Bowden – but then I came to understand the real reason he held such extreme views
By Tom Clements - Independent

It's true what they say about the alt-right: it's a tiny – I mean, really tiny – group of people and its members reside largely in the gloomier recesses of the internet. So why is such a small cabal having a profoud effect on our modern political discourse? Because, as I found out myself, when something goes wrong in life, it's so incredibly easy to slip down those dark rabbit holes. The alt-right fantasy of a white ethnostate, which its leading proponents espouse, harks back to a set of ideas last popular in early modern history. We might have considered these now confined to the ideological dustbin but, for some, they are providing a new refuge from a world which makes them feel vulnerable and unheard – just like the alt-right orators they idolise. Not that long ago, after a bout of debilitating depression which left me housebound, I found myself inadvertently spiralling down the alt-right rabbit hole. I went from watching videos by Paul Joseph Watson, a rather facile right-wing polemicist, to Stefan Molyneux, an alt-lite philosopher with a perverse fixation on race and IQ. Before long, I was fully immersed in the squalid depths of this sordid online subculture composed mainly of young men led by an elitist intellectual vanguard. Richard Spencer, the internet alt-right’s de-facto leader, comes from an academic background and cites Friedrich Nietzsche and fascist philosopher Oswald Spengler as his influences. His rival, Greg Johnson, is a San Francisco-based writer and founder of the publisher Counter Currents who also lends a veneer of intellectual respectability to ideas that, I now realise, are reprehensible – and quite rightly shunned by the mainstream. Yet it wasn’t these two rather Americans that grabbed my attention. It was an obscure figure named Jonathan Bowden.
After the El Paso shooting, Ben Shapiro, a popular conservative podcaster, asked Americans to draw a line between the few conservatives who are white supremacists and those who, like him, aren’t. Almost all Americans are “on the same side,” he said, and “we should be mourning together.” In his telling, we aren’t, for “one simple reason: Too many on the political left [are] castigating the character of those who disagree,” lumping conservatives and political nonconformists together with racists and xenophobes. I grew up in a conservative family. The people I talk to most frequently, the people I call when I need help, are conservative. I’m not inclined to paint conservatives as thoughtless bigots.

But a few years ago, listening to the voices and arguments of commentators like Shapiro, I began to feel a very specific deja vu I couldn’t initially identify. It felt as if the arguments I was reading were eerily familiar. I found myself Googling lines from articles, especially when I read the rhetoric of a group of people we could call the “reasonable right.” Not all these figures identify as right-wing. They typically dislike President Trump but say they’re being pushed rightward — or driven to defend the rights of conservatives — by intolerance and extremism on the left. The reasonable right includes people like Shapiro and the radio commentator Dave Rubin; legal scholar Amy Wax and Jordan Peterson, the Canadian academic who warns about identity politics; the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt; the New York Times columnist Bari Weiss and the American Enterprise Institute scholar Christina Hoff Sommers, self-described feminists who decry excesses in the feminist movement; the novelist Bret Easton Ellis and the podcaster Sam Harris, who believe that important subjects have needlessly been excluded from political discussions. They present their concerns as, principally, freedom of speech and diversity of thought. Weiss has called them “renegade” ideological explorers who venture into “dangerous” territory despite the “outrage and derision” directed their way by haughty social gatekeepers.
PayPal suspended an account used to raise funds by one of the US's largest white supremacist groups six days after it was first flagged by an anti-bigotry campaigner. The Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan had promoted the account via a donation page on its website. PayPal acted on Friday after others picked up on the issue and urged it to block the recipient. The US-based firm faces criticism for not resolving the issue more rapidly. PayPal previously pledged to "evaluate all sites" brought to its attention that involved the use of its service to fund the KKK and other organisations advocating racist views. "I have tonnes of concerns that PayPal is not able to act quickly and decisively on hate groups," Nandini Jammi, from the internet-based group Sleeping Giants, told BBC News. "There are some examples of them acting in a fairly timely manner. "But they're not applying [their anti-hate policy] in a consistent enough manner." A spokesman for PayPal said: "Due to our legal and data protection obligations, we cannot comment on any specific PayPal customer's account. "We carefully review accounts to ensure our services are used in line with our acceptable use policy and take action as appropriate. "We do not allow PayPal services to be used to promote hate, violence, or other forms of intolerance that are discriminatory."
By Mike Lillis

Democrats on Capitol Hill are pressing hard to adopt tougher gun laws following a pair of mass shootings this month that horrified the country and rekindled the on-again, off-again push to install higher barriers to owning firearms. But as Congress prepares to return to Washington next month from the long summer recess, Democrats also want to go a step further to tackle another scourge they consider to be related: the threat of violent white nationalism that, according to federal law enforcers, is on the rise. The lawmakers' ultimate goal is to strengthen the nation's hate crime laws and weed out race-based incidents of domestic terrorism. As a first step, they're pushing legislation designed to log the frequency of such cases around the country — data they say has gone neglected as the Trump administration has focused more squarely on foreign-based threats to homeland security. "Some of us have had this concern for quite a while, that [domestic terrorism] was always second fiddle to Islamist terrorism to the homeland. And we had a difficult time getting the documentation," Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said Tuesday by phone. "Ultimately we finally got an admission from the FBI that domestic terrorism was on the rise, but more importantly, it was tied more to radical right-wing extremists than it was any other group." The Democrats are leaning on recent testimony from FBI Director Christopher Wray, who told a Senate committee last month that "a majority of the domestic terrorism cases that we’ve investigated are motivated by some version of what you might call white supremacist violence."
By Marissa Brostoff

Last fall, speaking to a far-right Austrian magazine, the Iowa Republican congressman Steve King succinctly laid out his theory of Western decline. The problem, he suggested, was a demographic born at the nexus of reproduction and immigration. “If we continue to abort our babies and import a replacement for them in the form of young violent men, we are supplanting our culture, our civilization,” King said. King had already called attention to himself the previous year for retweeting a cartoon that depicted the nativist Dutch party leader Geert Wilders as a bulwark against invading Muslim hordes. “Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies,” King wrote. This month, King was back in the headlines. Speaking to a conservative group outside Des Moines about his support for a total ban on abortion, he asked: “What if we went back through all the family trees and just pulled those people out that were products of rape and incest? Would there be any population of the world left if we did that?” King’s questions were startlingly direct in their implication that sexual violence, at least if it led to childbirth, was a good thing. His frank misogyny almost overshadowed another implication of his words: When King refers to world population, he’s not talking about everybody. King is only the most notorious of the politicians who have recently justified their opposition to abortion by linking it to their anti-immigration politics. Conservative lawmakers and right-wing vigilantes alike have adopted a seemingly new language for describing their antiabortion stance: the white nationalist discourse of the “great replacement,” a conspiracy theory that holds that nonwhite immigrants are demographically “replacing” whites throughout the West.
By John Hood

Their political math is questionable. Their embrace of ‘nation-statism,’ regrettable. And Trumpism will probably not survive Trump. In 1780, in a speech in Parliament, Edmund Burke described gambling as “a principle inherent in human nature.” Although casino operators and poker enthusiasts seem to love this quote, Burke wasn’t talking about five-card stud or roulette wheels. Nor was he speaking in praise of gambling. He was criticizing the abuse of political power, arguing that it “produced great mischief” when powerful people came to view government as a source of economic advancement, through political scheming or litigation, rather than relying on the careful stewardship of their own resources. He used the term “gaming” to describe this distasteful and socially destructive form of political corruption. “I would furnish no evil occupation for that spirit,” Burke said. “I would make every man look everywhere, except to the intrigue of a court, for the improvement of his circumstances.” I think of Burke’s insight whenever I read some new scheme to solve a social problem with a new government program, subsidy, or regulation. There’s almost always some special interest behind it, some industry or organized lobby that will benefit at the public’s expense. As a conservative, I’ve seen and criticized plenty of this kind of mischief over the years, including some from the current Republican administration on trade policy, for example. But what really frustrates me isn’t the persistence of special pleading across shifts in partisan control — which is, as Burke pointed out, a predictable manifestation of unalterable human nature. It’s that a new cadre of conservative activists are invoking Edmund Burke’s name and legacy as they seek to defend Donald Trump, champion his policies, and construct a new political movement, a conservative version of nationalism, in the president’s political wake.
Spencer Platt/Getty

When Barack Obama took office in January 2009, white supremacists were fragmented and without charismatic leaders. That quickly changed with the arrival of Richard Spencer, Matt Heimbach and Milo Yiannopoulos, a generation of new leaders who created and captured a following that capitalized on white unease over a black president. The good news is that over time these leaders were marginalized and neutralized, finally demonized by the media and subjected to public humiliation for their neo-Nazi views. They were disrupted. But the sentiments they embraced had taken hold, bursting into full view in Charlottesville in 2017, with white supremacists carrying torches and chanting, “Jews won’t replace us.” They’re fragmented again post-Charlottesville, and post-El Paso, seeking other social media platforms while law enforcement plays whack-a-mole, beating them back until they pop up somewhere else. The American people are left to wonder what more can be done to counter this growing threat that government has left unattended for too long, while keeping quiet what information it has collected, including a document showing that white supremacists were responsible for all race-based domestic terrorism incidents in 2018.
By Emmanuel Ocbazghi

INSIDER's Manny Ocbazghi opines that Fox News pundits have been echoing white supremacist talking points during segments on immigration. These talking points are tied to a conspiracy theory called "The Great Replacement." The Great Replacement theory says that nonwhite populations around the world are maliciously marginalizing and deliberately replacing white populations. Manny: Ever since Fox News started in 1996, they have been on one. - And by the way, for all you kids watching at home, Santa just is white. - Poor families in America have, 99% of them have a refrigerator. - A fist bump, a pound, a terrorist fist jab? Manny: Recently though, Fox News opinion programs have been accused of something far more sinister. Tucker Carlson: How, precisely, is diversity our strength? Can you think, for example, of other institutions such as, I don't know, marriage or military units in which the less people have in common, the more cohesive they are? Jared Taylor: Diversity of the kind we're all supposed to be celebrating, whether it's religious or racial or linguistic or cultural, all of that, they are sources of tension and conflict. Manny: That's Jared Taylor, a popular white supremacist. If you're asking, "Why in the world does Tucker Carlson sound like that guy?" You are not alone. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Fox News opinion programs have been echoing white supremacist talking points to their millions of viewers...oh no, wait, that's exactly what I'm saying. Here's how they do it. By now, we all know what racism is. It's racist to assume that I'm good at basketball. It's true, but it's racist. White supremacists have a specific purpose, though. They believe in policies that will lead them to the ultimate goal: a whites-only society. That's because they believe that white people are inherently superior to other races, and, therefore, shouldn't coexist with them. However, that goal is threatened by what they call The Great Replacement.
Fox News figures have repeatedly warned of an immigrant “invasion”
Written by Courtney Hagle

The shooter who killed 20 people and injured dozens in El Paso, TX, over the weekend first posted online a document outlining the white nationalist “great replacement” theory to which he subscribed. Fox News has long mainstreamed this theory’s rhetoric. In a 2,300-word screed posted online, the El Paso gunman appeared to draw inspiration from previous terror attacks, including an attack on Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand, which he cited. The perpetrators in these attacks were motivated by the white supremacist “great replacement” conspiracy theory that white people are being systematically “replaced” by people of color through mass immigration, possibly orchestrated by a globalist group that seeks to rule the world. Anti-Semites often hold people of Jewish faith responsible for this perceived globalist takeover -- during a 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA, the protestors infamously chanted “Jews will not replace us,” referencing the theory. On Fox, the responsible group is typically the Democratic Party. The gunman in El Paso described immigrants as “invaders” flooding into the United States, which is rhetoric that both President Donald Trump and Fox News personalities frequently employ. Fox hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, who both have a history of pushing white nationalism and bigotry on cable airwaves, blatantly push the theory that white Americans are being replaced through immigration to the benefit of Democrats. Variations of the white supremacist “great replacement” theory have also appeared on other Fox programs.
An anonymous book author has lit the online right on fire — including some in the president’s orbit.
By BEN SCHRECKINGER

The most important political book of the past year just might be a grammatically challenged manifesto in favor of nude sunbathing written under the pen name Bronze Age Pervert. Where Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” inspired generations of libertarians to enter politics, and Aaron Sorkin’s “The West Wing” did the same for idealistic liberals, a cohort of young, right-wing men are today gravitating toward “Bronze Age Mindset.” The self-published book urges them to join the armed forces in preparation for the onset of military rule. Since its publication in June 2018, the book has gained a following online, and its author, known to his fans as BAP for short, has come to the attention of notable figures on the Trumpist right. Earlier this month, the book was the subject of a 5,000-word review by Michael Anton, a conservative intellectual who served as a spokesman for Donald Trump’s National Security Council. Anton concludes by warning, “In the spiritual war for the hearts and minds of the disaffected youth on the right, conservatism is losing. BAP-ism is winning.” Anton is just one of the Trump world figures who has taken notice. "It’s still a cult book,” said another former Trump White House official. “If you’re a young person, intelligent, adjacent in some way to the right, it’s very likely you would have heard of it.” Right-wing agitator Mike Cernovich said he knows of young staffers in the White House who are fans of Bronze Age Pervert’s Twitter account — where the author posts photos of buff, shirtless men and promotes far-right positions on the culture war — though he does not know if they have read the book.
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