But WAC’s Los Angeles chieftain, at least, may not be quite the pacifistic type that Rudkowski likes to showcase. This past May, Bruno Ernst Bruhwiler was charged with four criminal counts related to making threats, according to the Los Angeles Superior Court’s website. Three of the counts were for making threats (Rudkowski himself says that he was charged with making “terroristic” threats), including against an “executive officer” (apparently a law enforcement or court official) carrying out his duties. The fourth count is for “willful disobedience” of a court order.

Bruhwiler’s website says that the charges stem from an incident when he was attending a civil case involving a WAC-LA member. “The Judge literally did not like Bruno’s involuntary facial expressions, and ordered him out of the courtroom,” reads the website posting. Hatewatch’s repeated E-mail and phone requests for comment from Bruhwiler were not answered. WAC also declined to respond to Hatewatch’s repeated requests for comment on Bruhwiler’s activities.

But on its website, WAC-LA has described the charges as baseless. “The truth is that any one of us could easily face what Bruno is facing because it’s all about the rulers keeping the masses and our uppity attitudes about our ‘Rights’ in check,” the group wrote in a July 20 post asking for defense fund donations. “’How dare you make a face in my court room!!! How dare you ask for my identification, SLAVE!!!!’”

That’s not all. Bruhwiler, it turns out, is part of the extreme-right “sovereign citizens” movement — people who believe that the government has no authority to impose laws and regulations on most Americans. He has engaged in some of the practices preached by “redemption” scammers, most of whom are seeking to wrest millions of dollars from the government for their personal use. He has allegedly harassed former co-workers with “sovereign” letters demanding money. And he is a member of the Oath Keepers, a conspiracy-oriented Patriot group. All in all, it seems clear that Bruhwiler, despite Ludkowski’s claims of running a relatively moderate group, is part and parcel of the most radical wing of the Patriot movement.

Two workers at a California marketing company where Bruhwiler was laid off three years ago told Hatewatch that the WAC-LA leader was so enraged that he wrote a series of threatening letters to the company demanding massive sums of money. They said Bruhwiler, who had worked in a graphic design section that the firm decided to outsource, claimed that he had been subjected to wrongful termination, conspiracy and abuse of power. The letters were brimming with the virtually incomprehensible legalistic gobbledygook that is typical of such sovereign-citizen filings. Starting this spring, some of them were directed at the two workers, who had nothing to do with Bruhwiler’s termination (the workers asked not to be named for fear of retaliation from Bruhwiler). In one letter, Bruhwiler claims he was libeled and discriminated against by the recipient. His major beef seems to be that the firm supposedly took away his “God given freedom of speech when speaking out about the treasonous acts of 9-11 against the people of the United States” and the “treasonous cover up by the mainstream media.” Bruhwiler also complains of having been slandered with respect to his professional skills “by imputing to me general disqualification.” The letter demands payment of $100,000 within 21 days, with an additional $1 million per month for every month payment is not received. And it orders the recipient to surrender to the “authorities for criminal prosecution.” Next to Bruhwiler’s signature is a fingerprint in red ink, which in the redemptionist world symbolizes the blood of a sovereign citizen. It also says that the person signing the letter is a “Natural Man Divine creation, and a Private, Sentient Sovereign.”

Needless to say, the recipients were terrified. “These guys need to be watched,” said one woman who only worked with Bruhwiler for a few months but has nevertheless received two letters from him demanding $1 million. “This is crazy and it is scary.”

Bruhwiler also appears to be a participant in so-called redemption practices, which are rife in the world of sovereign citizens. Proponents of this bizarre ideology argue that when the U.S. quit the gold standard in 1933, it pledged its citizens as collateral so it could borrow money based on their future earnings. Then, the theory goes, the government funded a secret “Treasury Direct Account” for each individual that it stocks with millions of dollars. Redemptionists have come up with a series of bizarre maneuvers that are meant to liberate this money from the government and have it paid to them personally. For most redemptionists, this involves, among many other incomprehensible steps, filing a “Uniform Commercial Code-1” document.

In February, Bruhwiler filed just such a form with California Secretary of State. His UCC-1 filing says that his “one hundred billion United States silver dollars” have now been transferred to “Bruno Ernst Bruhwiler, a living man, secured party.”

Bruhwiler is also a member of another antigovernment group, the Oath Keepers, which is made up of law enforcement officers, military personnel and veterans. The group, which like WAC is part of the Patriot movement, vows to resist government efforts to “disarm the American people” or impose martial law or turn cities into “giant concentration camps” — all core Patriot conspiracy theories. (Several Oath Keepers have lately been implicated in criminal violence, including a Georgia member accused in May of plotting to take over a Tennessee courthouse and place two dozen officials under “citizen’s arrest.” Also, in Cleveland, Ohio, a member is awaiting trial on 54 criminal counts related to his alleged storing of a live napalm bomb at home, as well as keeping explosives at a friend’s home.)

In addition, Bruhwiler regularly makes pleas for support on popular antigovernment media sites, most notably that of leading movement conspiracy-monger Alex Jones’ Internet radio show. On June 17, Jones interviewed Bruhwiler in a segment that bashed law enforcement. “A lot of these cops don’t see us as human,” Jones said of the threat case against Bruhwiler. “They enjoy throwing milk cows in prison. We are seen as slaves, and when a slave gets uppity, they got to be put in their place.” Jones went on to describe the officials in question as “out of control,” “ruthless” and “tyrannical.” Jones asked Bruhwiler to share his E-mail address with Jones’ on-air listeners to solicit funds. (Ironically, Bruhwiler had earlier devised a WAC-LA outreach program called “Talk to a Cop Wednesdays.” It was meant to “befriend and educate law enforcement.”)

Earlier this year, WAC leader Rudkowski told the SPLC that he started the group to showcase “patriot journalists.” (Today, the group is by far the largest Patriot group in the country, with 102 chapters in 33 states.) WAC’s original obsession was with 9/11 conspiracy theories — still the group’s bread and butter — that originated both on the political right and the political  left. (WAC says it rejects the “fear-based politics and state mandated propaganda being disseminated by the Corporate Media which has facilitated the cover-up of 9-11.”) But over time, WAC has taken up several additional conspiracies specific to the radical right. Today, the group’s website frets about a looming “one world order” and says it seeks “to uncover the truth behind the private banking cartel of the military industrial complex” that wants to “eliminate national sovereignty.” Rudkowski now seems particularly worried about the alleged role in the supposedly imminent “New World Order” of organizations such as the Bilderberger group and the Trilateral Commission. These institutions have been targeted for decades as major global evildoers by Patriot groups and other far-right organizations, including several that are racist and virulently anti-Semitic.

The roster for WAC’s upcoming Sept. 9-12 9/11 conference in New York City reflects its continuing ability to attract A-list conspiracy theorists, while still bridging right and left. Speakers at the event are to include Bob Schulz, head of We The People, the second largest Patriot group in the U.S. Schulz specializes in far-right conspiracies about the Federal Reserve and the income tax. Gary Franchi, the purveyor of the film “Camp FEMA: American Lockdown” that alleges the government agency is planning to round up Americans into concentration camps run by the agency, will be on hand. So, too, will Paul Craig Roberts, a right-wing columnist who writes for the racist VDARE.com website (named after the first English child born in America).

At the same time, the conference will hear from former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.), a woman once seen as being on the political left who has lately flirted with Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites. Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan also will be featured, as will Danny Schechter, a human rights activist and television producer. So will a number of Democratic politicians, including former Alaska senator Mike Gravel and Don Siegelman, the former governor of Alabama who is free while appealing a prison sentence for corruption.

The apparent resurgence of anti-Muslim hate crimes followed a long decline that began after a major outbreak in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center (more below).

The most violent of these attacks took place on Tuesday in New York City, when 21-year-old film student Michael Enright allegedly attacked a cab driver. Police said that Enright cursed out the cabby after asking him if he was Muslim and then slashed his throat and stabbed him in several places when he answered in the affirmative. Enright was charged with hate crimes on Wednesday.

In California also on Tuesday, Imam Abdullah Salem arrived at the Madera Islamic Center to find two menacing signs, one of which read, “Wake up America, the enemy is here.” It was the latest in a recent string of attacks on the center, including a brick thrown at the building on Sunday and a sign posted the prior week that read, “No temple for the God of terrorism at Ground Zero.”

Yesterday evening, a drunk man entered a Queens mosque, shouting anti-Muslim slurs while urinating on prayer rugs, according to the New York Post. The man, identified by police as Omar Rivera, also allegedly shouted slurs, calling the worshippers “terrorists.”

These incidents are just the latest in a series of anti-Muslim attacks that have taken place over the course of the past year. On May 12, a Muslim community center was firebombed while filled with people. Approximately 60 worshipers were at The Islamic Center of Northeast Florida in Jacksonville when a pipe bomb went off around 9:35 p.m. It caused a small fire in the back of the building, but no one was injured. The FBI released surveillance video of what appeared to be a middle-aged white man carrying a gasoline container in the area of the bombing. Investigators believe he is connected to the attack. Another surveillance video was released that showed a different man who entered the mosque April 4 and shouted anti-Islam epithets. Neither man has been found.

FBI national hate crime statistics for years showed very little anti-Muslim hate crime violence. In 1995, the first year for complete FBI hate crime statistics, there were 29 anti-Muslim hate crimes recorded; that stayed about level through 2000, when there were 28. But in 2001, the 9/11 attacks spurred a 17-fold growth in hate crimes to 481, according to the FBI. At least three people and as many as eight were murdered in anti-Muslim attacks in the months immediately after the attacks, according to press reports. At around the same time, however, President Bush gave an important speech, saying Islam was not the enemy, and hate crimes the following year, 2002, dropped to 155. That number essentially declined slowly until 2008, when there were 105 anti-Muslim hate crimes recorded. Those are the latest statistics available.

The FBI statistics are known to severely understate the total number of hate crimes. According to a Department of Justice study, the real level of reported and unreported hate crimes is between 20 and 30 times higher than the numbers that are published. However, the trends the numbers show are believed to be accurate.

For more on recent anti-Muslim violence, read our recent round up in the Intelligence Report.

Geller has never been shy about her anti-Islamic views. In May, she spent $10,000 for anti-Islam ads to be placed for a month on 40 New York City buses. Among other things, the ads directed Muslims to a website urging them to leave the “falsity of Islam.” But that’s just the start — Geller’s fear-mongering against Muslims seems to know no bounds.  “As their numbers and influence grow, they will be attempting a political takeover, and if that doesn’t work, they will turn to further intimidation, murder and terrorism — just as they’ve already proved in dozens of countries around the world,” Geller says of American Muslims. Geller, who once delivered a videotaped anti-Muslim rant while frolicking in the surf in a bikini, is also a “birther” who doesn’t believe President Obama is an American citizen. (Media Matters for America provides comprehensive documentation of Geller’s many anti-Muslim, bigoted and otherwise remarkable statements.)

Geller’s Muslim-bashing has resonated with certain conservatives, several of whom, including former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, have come out against the Muslim community center. But Geller’s views are now also finding support from nearly every sector of America’s racist right. This is rather surprising because Geller is Jewish, a fact that is normally enough to dissuade radical rightists from too tight an embrace. Apparently, Geller is a Jew the racist right can love.

On the oldest and largest white nationalist forum, Stormfont.org, Geller’s anti-Islamic blog posts have been shared on several occasions. In January, for instance, “Thunderbird” posted several links to Geller’s writing and that of another Jewish woman who writes for the anti-immigrant hate site, VDARE.com. “Thunderbird” asked her fellow haters whether these “notorious right wing conservative Jewish bloggers are … on our side on many issues.” A compatriot, “GE Bonaventure” replied, “Jewish Nazi’s, Fascists, right wingers etc. are small in number but they can make sense.”

In May, “skinjob88” (88 is neo-Nazi code for “Heil Hitler”) gave Geller high praise on Stormfront: “In my country and the rest of Europe, [Muslims] are pushing for Islamification, they are killing good White teenagers and raping young White girls, they inter-marry and inter-breed with their family members. Don’t think for one minute the US is safe from Islam.” But the support wasn’t unanimous. One Stormfronter expressed anger that Geller seemed blind to the horrors of non-white races. In April, “Teutonic Beubonic” wrote: “She singles out Muslim immigrants in Europe for their uncivilized animal-like behavior and likeliness to commit crime, yet she refuses to mention anything about blacks or Latinos in the U.S. … Shame on her.”

Over at the Rebellion blog, run by the racist neo-secessionist group League of the South, head blogger “Old Rebel” has more than once expressed support for Geller’s anti-Islamic views. In August, referring to Geller’s protests in New York, the poster said that “[i]f the globalist elite has its way, more Muslims will be colonizing us.” “Anonymous” posted in reply: “Islam comprises much more than a cult. Islam, unlike any other religion I challenge you to name, is a top to bottom political movement that spans government, law, culture and worship practices that, when it achieves hegemony, tolerates no deviation from any of its aspects without severe penalty.”

American Renaissance, a race science outfit whose leader has written that black people are incapable of sustaining civilization, has posted more than one Geller column on its website. This past January, the group featured a Geller piece from The Washington Times that asserted that Muslims were attempting to replace European law with Islamic law. Her message resonated with American Renaissance’s readers. “It won’t be long before Muslims will be voting to end democracy in Europe and replacing it with Islamic law,” wrote one anonymous poster.

Geller’s work has been particularly popular at the National Policy Institute (NPI), a white nationalist organization that calls itself an “advocacy group for America’s historical majority” — white people. NPI has posted repeatedly about the planned New York center and NPI supporters have signed on to Geller’s message that Islam is bad for the U.S. This past month, in a typical comment to NPI’s boards, “bob” wrote: “[W]e need to keep the Muslims from doing what they have done to the UK and many other parts of Europe. … It is unwise to help violent people gradually take over the country and it is not mercy or justice for anyone to let them destroy it.”

The white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens, which has close ties to NPI, couldn’t agree more. The group had this to say on its blog about the planned New York mosque: “This USED TO BE America.”

Perhaps part of the reason that Geller is getting a hearing with these extremists is that she shares more than just their anti-Muslim views. This past April, Geller defended the South African apartheid-defending terrorist Eugene Terre’Blanche after he was found murdered. She blamed his death on “black supremacism.”

“The whites in South Africa are keenly aware of the plans to kill them, better known as ‘The night of the long knives,’” Geller wrote on her blog Atlas Shrugs. “They expect it to happen very soon after the death of Mandela, but to tell this to the world is a waste of energy. Atlas has been reporting on this horror that the savages in the media ignore.”

And Geller has been defending and working with organizations that are blatantly racist and anti-Semitic. This past June, Geller spoke at an event in Paris put on by the Bloc Identitaire, which opposesrace-mixing and “Islamic imperialism.” Geller also is a proud supporter of the English Defence League (EDF), described by Salon.com as “a far-right street movement that sprang up in the United Kingdom earlier this year to protest planned construction of mosques and to stoke fear of Islam more broadly.” According to the Guardian, EDF members have been involved in violent anti-mosque protests, made violent statements that included the threat that an EDF member may one day “murder” any Muslims he can get his hands on, and has engaged in “racism” and “virulent Islamophobia.”

No wonder some of America’s racists have found common cause with Geller, given her support of an apartheid leader and blatantly racist European groups, not to mention her untrammeled Muslim-bashing. And no wonder, too, that Newt Gingrich has just decided to drop out of the upcoming SIOA rally against the planned Muslim community center scheduled for September 11. Pamela Geller may be getting a little too toxic for anyone with claims to be part of the political mainstream, no matter how thin those claims may be stretched.

City Administrator Robert Hartwig told the Omaha World-Herald that the council most likely will not vote on the proposed 18% increase in the city’s portion of the property tax rate until Sept. 14. If approved, the owner of a $200,000 house would pay about $116 more in taxes next year.

Fremont’s law was suggested to the community by Kris Kobach, a lawyer who works at the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which the Southern Poverty Law Center lists as an anti-immigrant hate group. Kobach, who has worked for FAIR for several years primarily proposing anti-immigrant laws similar to Fremont’s for smaller communities, has held GOP posts in his home state of Kansas and has taught at the University of Missouri, Kansas City’s law school.

Kobach tends to wreak financial havoc wherever he goes. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer last month set up a legal defense fund in that state to defend SB 1070, a harsh and highly controversial anti-immigrant law written by Kobach that was passed by Arizona’s legislature and signed by Brewer earlier this year. In late July, a federal judge issued a temporary injunction that put on hold key parts of the law that would have required police to check the immigration status of individuals they suspected of being undocumented.

Interestingly, SB 1070 includes a clause providing financial benefits to lawyers who defend immigration-restriction laws. Article 8 reads, “a person may bring an action in superior court to challenge any official or agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state that adopts or implements a policy that limits or restricts the enforcement of federal immigration laws to less than the full extent permitted by federal law,” and that “if there is a judicial finding that an entity has violated this section, the court shall order … that the person who brought the action recover court costs and attorney fees.”

Arizona isn’t the only place scrambling for funds to cover legal costs associated with anti-immigrant laws designed by Kobach. In fact, Kobach’s track record is disastrous. Not only have his laws raised tensions between Latinos and others in the communities where they have been enacted, but they have also caused millions of dollars in legal costs. According to Media Matters, Kobach has run up over $6.6 million in legal fees that small communities are responsible for paying. Those costs have included: $2,400,000 in Hazelton, Penn.; $4,000,000 in Farmer’s Branch, Texas; $270,000 in Valley Park, Mo.; and $12,600, plus expenses, in Maricopa County, Ariz.

Although Kobach has reportedly agreed to represent Fremont at a reduced cost, administrators anticipate other expenses related to the lawsuits. Hartwig said those costs include travel and lodging fees for Kobach, as well as outside assistance such as expert witnesses and support personnel.

A Panamanian official quoted Holbert, who was deported to Panama to face murder charges, as saying he established friendships with two of his victims by posing as a potential investor, then shot each in the head, buried them and took over their money and other property. The National Police in Panama said they found nine bodies on the property of Holbert and Reese, which included a hotel.

Holbert and his girlfriend had been on the run for more than two years, since they fled after being pulled over on Feb. 5, 2006, in Sheridan County, Wyo., for speeding in a stolen car.

Some of Holbert’s white supremacist history has been made public in news reports, including the fact that he has a swastika tattoo on his upper back and “Aryan Pride” on his arm. But a key piece of that history has not. In August 2002, Holbert joined the neo-Nazi National Alliance (NA), which at one time was the most important hate group in America. At the time, the Alliance was suffering from a leadership crisis caused by the death a month earlier of the group’s longtime leader, William Pierce. Under the leadership of Erich Gliebe, who followed Pierce, the NA would eventually fall apart, leaving only a few weak and scattered remnants.

Yesterday, on the racist online forum Stormfront, “whitegirl” posted that Holbert showed up at an NA meeting in 2003, saying he was the organization’s “Western Regional Coordinator.” “Whitegirl” said he tried “to take over the whole meeting” and tried to “get into a leadership position immediately.” She added that Holbert popped up a year later at a white nationalist cookout claiming to represent a new racist group.

Two years later, in 2005, Holbert, as has been reported, opened a racist store in Forest City, N.C., called Southern National Patriots, which sold books, CDs and pamphlets promoting his white supremacist views. On Stormfront, “whitegirl” wrote that Holbert tried to recruit local skinheads to frequent his store. The Southern National Patriots store was also the site of meetings where Holbert and others advocated for the rights of white Southerners.

Those meetings attracted extremists and a local leader in the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), an organization for the descendants of Confederate soldiers that has been roiled in the past decade by a power struggle between extremist members and those calling for the group to ban racists. Creighton Lovelace, who was in 2005 the commander of the local SCV chapter, Rutherford Rifles, spoke that year at an event held at Holbert’s store. During the rally, speakers reportedly praised the history of the South and repeatedly chanted, “Save the South.” According to a press report, Lovelace said in his speech that southern white Christians should be “separated from other peoples,” something he claimed the Bible demanded.

Lovelace was at the time pastor of the Danielton Baptist Church. Lovelace posted to LiveJournal in April 2005 that Holbert and Reese had joined his church. “It was a very happy day,” Lovelace proclaimed. He also referred to himself as having been for a time the couple’s “spiritual advisor.” But by May 2005, Lovelace had quit his association with Holbert and Southern National Patriots.

That same year, Lovelace and Danielton Baptist Church achieved national notoriety for placing provocative anti-Islam messages on the church’s sign. At one point, the church featured a sign that read, “The Koran needs to be flushed.” E-mails for comment about Holbert and Reese to Lovelace, who now runs Bible Defender Ministries, were not immediately returned.

Before fleeing the U.S., Holbert already had racked up a serious criminal history. In January 2006, a warrant had been issued for Holbert’s arrest for theft using false pretenses. In October 2005, while posing as a doctor and using a false driver’s license, Holbert opened a bank account in the name of Luke Gregory Kuhn. Holbert then allegedly sold a house he did not own in Oak Island, N.C., for more than $200,000. Over the following two months, he withdrew the proceeds from the illegal home sale from the bank account in small increments and then fled to Kentucky, where he obtained a false Kentucky’s driver’s license in the name of Donald Lee Bruckert. It was a just a few weeks later that Holbert and Reese fled the country.