Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
Larry Keller
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World Net Daily Speakers Defend Tea Parties
01 year ago
by Larry Keller
in Antigovernment
MIAMI, Fla. — Are the Tea Parties racist organizations? No, said three African-American panelists presented with that question at the third and final day of the “Taking America Back” conference here on Saturday.
But given the fact that the conference was organized by the far-right World Net Daily (WND) and two of the panelists work for the online organization, their verdict was about as surprising as balmy nights and swaying palms on a South Florida summer night. Still, it reflected the anger and resentment that many conservatives have felt over the characterization of the populist Tea Parties as racist.
Many liberals and reporters have pointed out various signs of anti-black racism within the movement, which took root after Barack Obama was elected the nation’s first black president in late 2008. The NAACP brought that criticism to a new level this July, when it passed a resolution asking Tea Party leaders to repudiate followers who use racist language and symbols. The movement was set back on its heels again a few days later, when Mark Williams, chairman of the Tea Party Express, was expelled along with his group from the National Tea Party Federation after he wrote a satirical letter in which he called slavery as “great gig.” Earlier, Dale Robertson, leader of TeaParty.org, wrote an arguably racist E-mail to his followers.
The World Net Daily crowd stands considerably to the right of most Tea Party followers, and it is overwhelmingly white. But the WNDers feel the Tea Parties’ pain, and so the conference offered up what black speakers it had to take on the allegations of racism. They included Erik Rush, a WND columnist; Albert Thompson, executive assistant to Elizabeth Farah, who started WND with her husband Joseph; and Alan Keyes, an ultraconservative activist and oft-times candidate who has called President Obama “a radical communist.”
“There are a few racists in there. In any group, you’re going to find a few people of low character,” Rush said. But, for most in the movement, Rush said, “This has never been about Barack Obama. It’s certainly not about his skin color.”
He spoke to an audience of some 70 people. One of them was black.
For Thompson, the Tea Parties arose out of concern about illegal immigration and fears that Obama would push amnesty on a large scale. “It’s about a fundamental transformation without their consent,” he said. Keyes had a slightly different take, saying that Obama’s Marxism is what sparked the movement. He said Tea Partiers should ignore those who claim there are racists among them. “Let them take their phony standards to whatever form of perdition they choose,” he said.
Earlier on Saturday, conference attendees were entertained by Rusty Humphries, a nationally syndicated talk-radio personality. He sang ditties such as “Thank Allah I’m a Jihad Boy,” to the tune of John Denver’s “Thank God I’m a Country Boy,” and “Everybody’s Sneakin’ into the USA,” to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “Surfin’ USA.” “I’m so sick and tired of being called a racist,” Humphries said to applause. He then suggested that perhaps Mexicans coming into the United States could at least learn Americans customs and the English language and “maybe have $10 in your pocket.” He also implied that Mexican immigrants are mooches.
And then it was back to simple attacks on Obama and his administration, the mainstay theme of the entire “Taking America Back” conference. Humphries complained of the “radical, socialist regime in power” that has created the “United Socialist States of America.” WND Managing Editor David Kupelian said Obama is a Marxist whose advisors are “clinically insane” and added that the Department of Education is filled with “atheistic, progressive, socialistic wackos.” Kupelian — who has the countenance of an undertaker, but acted a good deal gloomier — also had bitter words for most anybody with leftist leanings. “The hard left — they hate God; they hate normalcy.” The Tea Party movement wants an Ozzie and Harriet America, he continued. But “the left sees Ku Klux Klan everywhere.”
Out of more than two dozen speakers at the “Taking America Back” conference, only two were women. (U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, a Minnesota Republican, was a late scratch but did deliver a videotaped message.) One of them, Judith Reisman, maintained that the reports of the late sex researcher Alfred Kinsey changed America’s core values and laws in terrible ways with flawed studies. (Kinsey was the first public figure to suggest that very large numbers of Americans were homosexual or had had same-sex experiences; most researchers today do believe his estimates of the prevalence of homosexuality were high.) Among other things, she called Kinsey — who died 54 years ago — a “psychopath” and a “dirty old man.” She said many of his conclusions were “a massive lie” and that she hopes to push for a grand jury or congressional investigation next year of the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, as well as a class-action suit.
And then there was Victoria Jackson, best known as part of the ensemble cast of “Saturday Night Live” from 1986 to 1992. Now 51 and a self-described Tea Party member, she performed a tune, “There’s a Communist Living in the White House” on Friday night, and followed that up on Saturday evening with another ditty in which she again called Obama a communist.
Jackson’s political awakening is apparently a fairly new thing — she said she didn’t vote for the first time until she was in her 40s. But now she’s fully engaged and has a thing or two to tell the world: Evolution is wrong, the media is biased, her generation was brainwashed, and the president is a communist. Progressives, socialists, communists — they’re “all the same,” Jackson said.
The audience loved her.
Right Wingers Take on ‘Liar in Chief’
01 year ago
by Larry Keller
in Antigovernment
MIAMI, Fla. — To many of the far-right speakers and people attending the three-day “Taking America Back” conference here, President Obama doesn’t just espouse policies and ideology they loathe. They’re convinced he’s a Muslim, a communist or both.
Not only is Obama a communist, but the Democratic Party is “indistinguishable from socialists or communists in the way they think,” Jerome Corsi told a receptive and enthusiastic audience today, the conference’s second day. Corsi is a frequent contributor to the right-wing World Net Daily (WND) that organized the confab at the Doral Golf Resort & Spa, and has written books savaging Obama and Sen. John Kerry, when Kerry was the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004.
Corsi also claimed that Obama’s autobiography was “most likely written by Bill Ayers.” Ayers was an anti-war activist during the Vietnam War and co-founded the Weather Underground, a self-described revolutionary communist group. He and Obama knew each other in Chicago, decades after Ayers’ alleged illegal activities. Major media organizations have concluded the two men never had a close relationship, but Corsi and others like him insist it was something more.
Corsi also implied that Obama is a Muslim and derided him for not attending church services in Washington, D.C. “He can’t pick a church because he doesn’t believe in God, as far as I can see,” Corsi said. He called on the president to renounce Lucifer and Islam in order to prove that he’s a Christian. For his part, Obama has clearly described himself as a practicing Christian for decades.
Another speaker, Robert Knight, a correspondent for ultra-conservative Coral Ridge Ministries of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., claimed that the Obama Administration is taking the United States closer to communism than any president in history. The administration is “staffed with socialists and communists of all stripes,” he said, without naming any examples.
WND’s Jerusalem-based reporter Aaron Klein — who had a book published this year calling Obama a “Manchurian candidate” — told the crowd that Obama “has a certain affinity” for Muslims, but that he’s found no evidence he is one. Still, he added, the president studied the Koran and attended a mosque as a child in Indonesia. And he contended that Obama’s policies and statements regarding Islam have endangered America. Yet another speaker claimed that “there’s evidence” that Obama’s education was paid for by the Saudis. The purported evidence was not described.
The perceived evils and dangers of Islam comprised a good part of today’s discussions. During a question-and-answer session with the audience, one conference attendee proposed that the United States impose a moratorium on Muslim immigration and education until the Koran’s teachings become compatible with the U.S. Constitution. Many in the audience cheered the idea. Conservative activist and perennial candidate for public office Alan Keyes responded, “We should be eager” for Muslims to come to America. “It saves us the trouble of going over there to evangelize,” he said. “I think we’ve become timid. I think we’ve become afraid.” He, too, got applause.
But nobody seemed to get a louder ovation than Corsi. One of the most prominent and persistent of those on the far right who maintain that Obama hasn’t proved that he was born in America, Corsi again insisted that the president needs to produce the “long form” of his birth certificate. Obama is the “liar in chief,” Corsi said, claiming that the president stole the Social Security number of somebody else to establish a U.S. identity. While even most Republicans say they believe Obama was born in Hawaii, Corsi and World Net Daily never seem to tire of the subject. Corsi said he’s releasing a book next year titled “Where is the Birth Certificate?”
Like other speakers and attendees at the conference, Corsi also complained that the Republican Party’s allegedly benign attitude toward homosexuals and same-sex marriage is unacceptable. “If this is where the Republican Party wants to go, as far I’m concerned, they can go there alone,” he said. “The big-tent Republican Party doesn’t work.”
Corsi drew loud cheers when he proposed that the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Education be dismantled. “All they want to do is teach our kids sex education,” he complained of the latter. He left the stage to a standing ovation.
The political rhetoric extended outside the ballroom where the conference is being held. Decals were affixed to urinals in at least one men’s room that expressed the sentiments of many at the conference.
“Hitler, Stalin & Mao all loved gun control,” read one decal. Said another: “Vote intelligently in November. It may be your last chance to preserve freedom.”
Political Mudslingers Populate Far-Right Miami Conference
01 year ago
by Larry Keller
in Antigovernment
MIAMI, Fla. — Self-described “birther king” and World Net Daily (WND) founder Joseph Farah said today that he thinks one or two states will pass legislation in the next year requiring presidential candidates to provide irrefutable proof that they are U.S. citizens in order to have their names placed on those states’ ballots. If that happens, Farah predicted, Obama won’t seek reelection in 2012. That’s because there is something “hideously embarrassing” in Obama’s background.
Farah’s soothsaying came during a question-and-answer session during the first day of a three-day conference he put together in Miami called “Taking America Back 2010” (the day after the conference ends, Farah and other far-right stalwarts will be hosting a similar event, this one on board a Caribbean cruise). A prayer that kicked off the conference today thanked God for Farah’s right-wing, conspiracy-minded WND. Later, one of the speakers thanked God for Farah. Farah, however, was far less interested in thanks than in the kind of political mudslinging for which he and several other conference attendees are well known.
Farah’s online publication — one of the “news” pillars of the contemporary American far right — has repeatedly questioned whether Obama was born in the United States (if he wasn’t, he could not legally serve as president). Of course, Obama has produced documents showing he was born in Hawaii, and that state’s Republican governor, along with a slew of news organizations, have vouched for his citizenship. But none of that has convinced Farah and his fellow travelers.
One of those fellow travelers, Jerome Corsi, is scheduled to speak at Farah’s conference Friday. A regular WND contributor and prolific producer of tendentious material, Corsi has written one book savaging Obama; another praising the anti-immigrant Minuteman movement; and a third, the most infamous, that “Swift-boated” then-Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Corsi has also been a guest on a white supremacist radio show.
In his prepared remarks today, Farah didn’t touch on Obama’s birthplace. Instead, he devoted much of his speech to what he sees as the shortcomings of the conservative movement, and his dismay at the progress being made by gay rights proponents. “The movement is simply not up to the task at hand,” an exasperated Farah complained. He added that there are ongoing efforts by unnamed forces to limit the agenda of the Tea Party movement solely to economic issues — a grave mistake, according to Farah, who told his audience of some 90 people that the conservative movement had lost its bearings by not uniformly opposing same-sex marriage. “Conservatives don’t recognize sin when they see it,” he said.
He cited right-wing attack dog Ann Coulter, Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist, Fox News commentator Glenn Beck and radio ranter Rush Limbaugh as examples of what he’s talking about. Farah recently withdrew his invitation for Coulter to speak at the Miami conference after learning that she was the headliner at an upcoming meeting of a gay Republican organization called GOProud. (Coulter, never one for niceties, responded by describing her erstwhile co-religionist as a “publicity whore.”) Norquist serves on GOProud’s advisory council. Beck recently said gay marriage is not a threat to the country. Limbaugh favors civil unions, Farah added, and had Elton John perform at his wedding.
“Conservatives aren’t fighting. They’re capitulating,” Farah fumed. “Their standards are being destroyed.”
He called U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker “a homosexual activist” who “imposed his own views on the electorate of California” by ruling last month that that state’s Proposition 8 ballot denying marriage rights to same-sex couples was unconstitutional. “I don’t think Americans can take much more of this tyranny,” he said. Farah also criticized pastors who are silent on controversial social issues, such as same-sex marriage. And he wasn’t alone. Clergy who don’t speak out on the “culture war” are “Dr. Evil, and part of the problem,” said another speaker, Doug Giles. Giles added that he wasn’t including Muslims in his criticism “because if we take them on…” — and then he made a sound mimicking that of explosives going off. Later, referring to a proposed Islamic Center in lower Manhattan, he said, “Islam is wanting to build a theme park at Ground Zero.”
Giles isn’t just another conservative South Florida minister and radio commentator. It was Giles’ daughter, Hannah, who famously pretended to be a prostitute in an undercover video filmed at ACORN offices that was used by conservatives to essentially destroy the liberal community organizing group. Giles’ other daughter has started a website called Girls Just Want to Have Guns.
Another speaker, Floyd Brown, led the audience in chants of “Enough is enough!” Brown is president of a consulting company that is perhaps best known for introducing the racially charged Willie Horton television ad that badly damaged the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis in 1988. “Obama hates Christianity,” Brown declared. “He is a Muslim.” The proof? Among other transgressions, the president has refused to attend the National Prayer Breakfast but celebrates Muslim holy days, Brown claimed. The media, for its part, is involved in a “conspiracy of silence” to conceal Obama’s hatred of Christianity, he charged.
Brown worked for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, and now he advocates that the new Congress that convenes after the November elections impeach Obama for high crimes and misdemeanors. That broad term, he said, simply means bad behavior. The president, he claimed, wants the United States to fail so that the goals of an “international socialist movement” will be achieved. “Barack Obama is a very dangerous man,” Brown declared. The past two years have been a “slow progression of what I’ll call a bloodless coup.”
Many of the speakers today and for the remainder of “Taking America Back” are from the religious right. One of them, a pastor named Gary Cass, decried the absence of God in politics. Secularism, he said, “seeks to undermine the republic with arbitrary, man-made laws and rights. When will we cry out to God for his mercy on America?”
Outside the ballroom where the parades of speakers appeared, conference attendees could get books like The Homosexual Agenda signed, buy slogan-emblazoned T-shirts and jewelry, grab literature from groups advocating that parents pull their kids from public schools in favor of Christian schools, pick up petitions opposing the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero, and much, much more.
Anti-Semitic Activist Now Into ‘Liberty Villages,’ Hemp
01 year ago
The last few years have been trying for New Mexico anti-Semite and militia proponent Clayton Douglas, but that hasn’t dampened his entrepreneurial spirit — or the high esteem in which he holds himself.
Douglas, 64, is a motorcycle aficionado who used to publish a biker magazine called Thunder Riders and another periodical titled Free American. The latter was a showcase for conspiracy theories, offbeat medical remedies and anti-Semitic screeds, such as “Are the Jews Behind the Destruction of America?” He also was information officer for the New Mexico Militia in the 1990s, sold tracts of the anti-Semitic Christian Identity theology at a 2002 expo, and blamed Jews for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks at another conference. As if that wasn’t enough, he was for a time mayor of the tiny hamlet of Bingham, N.M., which he succeeded in having declared a “U.N.-free zone.” He self-published a couple of “adventure novels” he said were modeled on John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee series. And he broadcast a daily shortwave radio program.
But Douglas’ world crashed in 2004, when he was struck by a car while riding his motorcycle. He says he was hospitalized for four months with severe head and other injuries and doctors gave his family little hope he would survive, or, if he did, have all his faculties. “The doctors had no idea of the sort of man Clay Douglas was,” he writes of himself in the third person on his website.
When Douglas was released from the hospital, his wife of 25 years promptly left him, and his businesses were in tatters, he says. He eventually resumed his radio show on the Internet and combined his businesses into one entity, CRD Publishing.
Nowadays, Douglas is still hawking his books and DVDs on his website, and posting anti-Semitic and conspiracy-laden content. But, in a new twist, he’s also promoting the benefits of hemp and of investing in so-called “Liberty Villages.” The latter project, which Douglas describes as a “national franchise opportunity,” apparently entails investors purchasing trailers constructed to look like cabins, teepees and yurts on property Douglas owns in New Mexico; the “villages” would cater to itinerant bikers traveling around the country. Ultimately, Douglas says that his Liberty Villages — none of which seem to have been built or even begun — aim to become self-sufficient communities that recreate “the kind of neighborhood we had in the beginning here in America.” Each Liberty Village in the Southwest will apply for the right to grow medical marijuana, he adds.
Douglas promises short-term financing, low interest rates and a variety of architectural styles. And time is of the essence, to hear Douglas tell it, what with high gas prices, “millions of illegals roaming our streets” and ominous detention centers being built.
But there are hints that Douglas’ strange little empire is struggling. He has posted a lengthy proposal for potential investors in his ventures. He needs $25,000 to cover existing debt and basic essentials and another $15,000 for expansion. With additional capital and staff, he envisions cross-promotion opportunities between his biker magazine, his radio show and the products and books he hopes to sell. He hopes to resurrect his Free American magazine that “explores the conspiracy version of history,” by combining it with Thunder Riders. His radio shows could be archived for late night programming from participating radio stations “until his popularity propels him into primetime with [Rush] Limbaugh, [Michael] Savage, [Don] Imus and [Michael] Reagan,” he writes, as usual, in the third person.
Sound grandiose? Not at all, Douglas says. Indeed, “many commanding officers in our armed services, police captains, intelligence operatives, Congressmen, Senators, governors and even Presidents have read his articles, relied on his intelligence, listened to his words over the airwaves for better than ten years.”
And who can blame them? “Tall, well built, handsome with an IQ well into the genius level, Clay seems to be a natural leader,” Douglas writes, steering clear of any hint of false modesty. He’s “personable, having a quick wit and a sharp mind” and “any of his videos will glue a couple to their couch for an evening.” He also is “self disciplined, possessing a will of iron, no fear.”
Despite the healthy state of his self-esteem, Douglas anticipates skepticism. “You may be asking yourself, if the above description is accurate, why isn’t he in Hollywood raking in the big bucks instead of working alone in his studio? Major media companies pay big bucks for personalities with less talent. Why hasn’t a network scooped this guy up? For the same reason the U.S. Army turned down his application for OCS [Officer Training School]. Sorry, son, someone with your IQ will question orders. They were right! Clay Douglas is the ultimate rebel.”
It’s these qualities, Douglas assures would-be investors, that “earned him the respect off equally strong men who have come back from war to mount the steel horses that are the symbol of the freedom they were willing to fight for. It is these qualities that make thousands of copies of Thunder Riders and Free American fly off the shelves around the country.”
Now all the self-described genius needs is your money.
Little Pulaski, Tenn., to Suffer Through Another Racist Event
01 year ago
Although it’s a small town of about 7,800, Pulaski, Tenn. may well be the white supremacist epicenter of the nation — at least if the number of rallies held there by bigoted groups is any indication.
The mayor and other residents aren’t pleased. “There’s never been a local person involved in these marches or rallies,” Mayor Daniel Speer told Hatewatch this week. But they’re resigned to being a favorite locale for the haters on the American radical right. Speer’s town is more than one-quarter black, but it has for decades been a favorite place for white supremacist groups to rally because of one unfortunate historical fact: This was where the Ku Klux Klan was born.
The next such event on tap in Pulaski: the annual European Heritage Festival, scheduled for Oct. 23. The event, despite its name, has the heavy footprint of the Klan all over it. Sponsors include the Christian Revival Center led by long-time Arkansas Klan leader Thom Robb; the Knights Party USA (better known by its original name of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan), which is Robb’s “political” organization; Voice of Reason radio, which features interviews with white nationalist luminaries such as Jamie Kelso and Tomislav Sunic; and Abundant Life Fellowship of Morgantown, Ind.
Abundant Life’s pastor, Jonathan Harness, is apparently a reader of Klan material. Last year, he responded to a blog by Robb’s daughter, who is involved in her father’s racist group, by writing that he was dismayed when black rapper Kanye West rudely interrupted a speech by country singer Taylor Swift at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. Harness wrote that West had “absolutely disrespected this white woman.”
“It’s a great place to come and learn about the heritage of European Americans,” the festival’s website says. The site includes links to racist individuals and groups including David Duke, who founded Robb’s Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in 1975; the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group that has described black people as a “retrograde species of humanity” and opposes “race mixing”; and The Barnes Review, the leading American journal devoted to denying the Holocaust.
The European Heritage Festival follows by three months a “White Unity Day March and Rally” in Pulaski conducted by the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations. A year earlier, in July 2009, the Fraternal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan staged a birthday march in Pulaski for their hero, Confederate Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest. There have been many other Klan rallies in Pulaski over the decades.
The Klan was organized as a secret fraternity by six Confederate veterans in December 1865 in Pulaski. As the club grew, it evolved from a club for wealthy and bored young veterans into a vigilante terrorist organization. It soon attracted as its first national leader Forrest, who had been a millionaire Memphis slave trader before the Civil War and also presided over the massacre of black Union soldiers attempting to surrender at Fort Pillow, Tenn., in 1864. (It remains unclear whether or not Forrest actively encouraged the massacre, as many Union survivors testified.) Forrest led the Klan through its most violent period, when thousands of acts of terrorism essentially forced black Southerners back into a form of servitude.
Robb’s Klan group has staged events in Pulaski going back to at least 1983, says Speer, who has been mayor nearly 21 years and has lived most of his 60 years in the southern Tennessee town. So many Klan events were held in the 1980s that local businesses, large and small, closed their doors in disgust during a 1989 rally as a way of silently protesting, Speer said. At times, folks in Pulaski hoped that if they ignored the Klan and other white supremacist groups when they came to Pulaski, they would lose interest in the town and permanently leave, Speer says. But they didn’t, and over the years the groups’ events have brought people ranging from satirist Stephen Colbert to reporters from as far away as Russia and Italy.
That’s of no concern to those attending next month’s European Heritage Festival. They’re planning on hearing speeches and eating hot dogs, apple pie and barbecue pork. Entertainment will be provided by Charity and Shelby Pendergraft, singing sisters who call themselves Heritage Connection. Thom Robb is their grandfather. Their mother, Rachel Pendergraft, is spokeswoman for Robb’s Knights Party. And if that’s not excitement enough for those attending the festivities, there’s always the Sam Davis Museum on Sam Davis Avenue. Davis was the “Boy Hero of the Confederacy” who was captured by the Yankees in 1863 and charged and convicted by a court-martial of spying. Davis was hanged by the Union Army on his 21st birthday — in Pulaski, of course.
Speer says that his town can’t constitutionally stop these groups from staging events as long as they comply with terms of their rally permits. At one point, the town passed a parade ordinance banning participants from wearing anything covering their heads — say, a hood. But a federal judge tossed the measure, which Speer says could have barred Boy Scouts from wearing their full uniforms in a parade.
“It’s frustrating,” the mayor says. “[We’re associated with] the Klan. It’s a stigma. Unfortunately, I just don’t see it going away.”
Author Interview: Journalist Probes ‘Backlash’ Under Obama
01 year ago
After Barack Obama’s 2008 election as the nation’s 44th president, the Tea Party movement sprang up, as did increasingly shrill assertions that the president was a socialist, a communist, a Muslim and more. Gun-rights advocates fretted that the new administration would impose draconian gun controls, while others insisted that the president wasn’t born in America and therefore was in office unlawfully.
Philadelphia Daily News senior writer and Media Matters for America senior fellow Will Bunch decided to investigate what gave rise to this vociferous movement. He traveled throughout the country, attending Tea Party and other conservative gatherings and interviewing activists. He talked to people such as right-wing Georgia congressman Paul Broun and Oath Keepers founding member Celia Hyde. He went to the semi-annual Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot in Kentucky and to Phoenix, the epicenter of the nativist anti-immigration movement.
What Bunch learned is the subject of his third book, The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama, which goes on sale on Tuesday. He spoke to Hatewatch on the eve of the book’s release:
Why did you choose this topic for a book? Was there a particular event that was a catalyst?
In the waning days of the 2008 campaign, I was fascinated with the rise of Sarah Palin and the drift of the American conservative movement into a kind of blissful know-nothingness about everything from big issues like climate change to Barack Obama’s religion and where he was born. I thought Obama’s supporters of “change” were really calling out for a return to reason. Thus, it was stunning to see the angry and often irrational forces gain strength and influence in those first months of the Obama presidency. And as a career journalist, I thought this was a kind of a story of a lifetime that I wanted to hit the road and latch onto as this backlash was unfolding.
Have you seen anything in the past comparable to the accusations against President Obama, such as that he wasn’t born in the United States, he’s a socialist, and so on?
The first presidential race I covered was in 1984 as a reporter for The Birmingham News in Alabama, watching Jesse Jackson tilt at the windmills of the Reagan revolution before the first-ever “Super Tuesday.” Clearly, the increasing ideological polarization of the two parties — triggered by the shift of the Deep South to the GOP during the ’80s, when I worked there — has made over-the-top demonizing of the other party more of a reality. The seeds were planted with some of the crazier talk about Bill Clinton, things like accusing him of murdering his aide Vince Foster.
But one thing has changed dramatically since the early 1990s. The more insane Clinton allegations were things like underground VHS videos or pamphlets, while the allegations about Obama not only spread 100 times faster on the Internet, but are amplified by talk radio and a coast-to-coast cable powerhouse, Fox News, that gives these low ideas great power. The other difference with Obama is that he is viewed as a symbol of cultural upheaval and fear, of the projections that whites will become a minority in America by the year 2050. These fears are making partisans grasp at the most outlandish theory, that the president is in some way not American.
Should we be concerned by this rhetoric? Or is it merely democracy in action?
I’m a strong believer in unfettered free speech, and so that would include the ability of citizens to advocate any and all nature of conspiracy theories. What I find appalling is that supposed leaders — major media personalities like [Fox New host] Glenn Beck, of course, but also members of Congress and other top pols who are not only educated but employ large staffs — gladly help spread political claptrap in search of higher ratings or more votes in their heavily gerrymandered districts. While free speech certainly applies to a Beck or congressional extremists like Michele Bachmann [R-Minn.] or Georgia’s Paul Broun [R], they also have a responsibility to act like adults, and to not influence their most unhinged followers who may be drawn to violence.
As you note in your book, the radical right and conspiracy theories are not a new phenomenon. What factors have contributed to the rise of the Tea Party movement and the resurgence of right-wing politics?
Major elements of the Tea Party/9-12/Oath Keeper movements are 50- and 60-somethings who harbor resentments that date back to the Vietnam era and other 1960s upheavals, as well as “the paranoid style” so eloquently described by Richard Hofstadter in the era of the John Birch Society — which, as an aside, is undergoing a resurgence. On the other hand, I sensed that the recruitment pool for this movement is growing — in part because of the size of the boomer age population [cohort], but mainly because of the growing fear in this country both over the cultural changes taking place [and] the rising class of permanently unemployed, middle-class, middle-aged Americans.
How does the far right today differ from in the past?
[There are t]wo related factors. One is the existence of a media structure that didn’t exist until the late 1990s — the Internet, where conspiracy theories are easily promulgated and validated; social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, which are powerful tools that allow groups like the Oath Keepers to grow quickly; and the conservative bent of coast-to-coast talk radio, finally topped off with the rise of Fox. One thing I discovered about the anti-Obama backlash is that this is a class of people — retirees, middle-aged layoff victims, part-time workers, etc. — with more free time than other people, and many are immersed for hours a day in Beck and [radio host Rush] Limbaugh Land.
But it’s also important to note that as Beck and Limbaugh became the de facto leaders of the Republican Party, they created a new class of political “leaders” who kowtowed to talk radio and even developed sound-bite platforms lacking in constructive solutions or any potential for negotiation or compromise. This has led to gridlock on Capitol Hill for everything from energy and climate change to immigration reform.
What surprised you the most in researching this book?
The rank and file of the Tea Party — with little attention being paid by the rest of us — is actively engaged in a quest for a certain kind of knowledge and education, which in part explains the rise of Glenn Beck, who has been enormously successful in pandering to that by recommending books and devoting entire shows to “history.” It’s good when people are interested in learning, but the problems are: a) many Tea Party types aren’t seeking unbiased American history but tomes that sometimes validate narrow-minded views about America and our traditions; and, b) leaders like Beck are peddling phony ideas about our alleged founding as a Christian nation or [claiming] that the progressive reforms of the 20th Century were really a march to totalitarianism.
What disturbed you the most in researching this book?
The villains of the story are what I call “the high-def hucksters.” These are the kind of people who look out at a fearful populace and instead of promoting calm — remember FDR? — see an opportunity for big bucks. This includes Beck, who made $32 million last year by marketing to America’s worst fears, and Sarah Palin, who ditched her chance to make a difference as a governor to make $12 million as a media celebrity. But there are others — I profile a businessman named Bill Heid who openly brags of the money he earns selling “survival seed banks” and solar generators to fearful Americans.
You single Glenn Beck out for a good deal of attention. How important is he in the emergence of the Tea Party and the far right’s revival?
Glenn Beck is huge, because with his background in entertainment — he is a student of Orson Welles and his fear-epic War of the Worlds — rather than raw politics, [he] has been able to tap into the raw emotions of an anxious middle America. As noted above, he also understands the desire for a kind of “education.” A recent poll showed that Beck is the most liked and most trusted figure in the Tea Party by far, and in my travels I met many who said they were moved to action by his broadcasts.
There has been debate as to whether or not the Tea Party movement is racist or contains racist elements. If voters in 2008 had elected a white man rather than Obama, would there still be a Tea Party?
There would certainly be anger and resentment from those long engaged in “the paranoid style” — one can look at some of the allegations about Bill Clinton and imagine that a President Hillary Clinton would have received, arguably, even worse treatment. That said, I think that Barack Obama — as the first black president, with an unusual life story and heritage and, of course, that infamous middle name — is a symbol for broader anxiety about major cultural change in America. This summer we’ve seen a powerful conflating of xenophobia about Mexican immigrants and Muslims and these notions that Obama is a Muslim or a Kenyan. That has helped to weaken the Obama presidency, and I don’t think it would have played out the same way with a white president.
A common refrain of the Tea Partiers and the far right is that they want to “take back America.” What do they want to take the country back to?
An America where they felt secure that the dominant culture would remain white, Christian and non-urban long after they are gone. Rapid change has overwhelmed many of these people in a way that futurist Alvin Toffler predicted with remarkable prescience in his 1970 book Future Shock. Some scientists even link these ideas to our broader fear of death, [arguing] that the kind of cultural unity and, arguably, purity sought by the “I want my country back” crowd is a form of immortality.
Do you think the Tea Party movement and the extreme right’s power have peaked, or will it continue to grow?
It’s complicated. In the short run, the Tea Party has been the tail wagging the American dog, exerting enough influence over the 41 [Republican] senators who represent just 37% of the population to block most meaningful legislation that would get the country moving forward. What’s more, the movement’s extreme rhetoric amid frustration over the march of a multicultural [society] raises the most unfortunate potential for more violent incidents like the killing of three Pittsburgh police officers by Beck fan Richard Poplawski, which I chronicle in The Backlash.
However, inexorably, the forces that rallied behind Obama in the 2008 election are still on the rise. While the 2010 election looks like an angry blip, over time America will continue to grow more racially diverse and also become more educated and most likely less religious, more tolerant on social issues like gay marriage. This would seem to not bode well for the Tea Party over time, but it’s still likely that the “last throes” of this movement may play over for a number of years.
Racists Need Funds to Give Terrorist a Viking Funeral
01 year ago
by Larry Keller
in Extremist Crime
So many causes, so little money. With groups beseeching us for financial help to find cures for diseases, to protect the environment, to help the less fortunate and so forth, it can be tough to decide to whom and what to dole out donations.
And now this: An appeal for money so that a murderous terrorist can have a nice funeral.
That overture came in recent days from the racist skinhead group, Blood & Honour American Division, on behalf of the family of Bruce Pierce. He was a member of The Order, a white supremacist terrorist group, who was responsible for shooting to death Jewish Denver talk radio show host Alan Berg in 1984.
Pierce died last week at 56, while serving a 252-year prison sentence in Pennsylvania. He was one of several surviving members of The Order still in prison. The Order was formed in 1983 by neo-Nazi Robert Jay Mathews. The group went on a crime spree in 1983 and 1984 that included the theft of $3.6 million from an armored car as a means of financing its goal of creating a guerilla army to resist and overthrow the U.S. government.
Pierce was the triggerman that shot Berg in June 1984 13 times outside his home with a MAC-10 machine gun. He was not convicted of murder, but of racketeering, conspiracy and violating Berg’s civil rights. Pierce died Aug. 16 of what a prison spokeswoman said was natural causes. Now Blood & Honour is asking members to help the family of the man it calls “our hero” and a “martyr” with funeral expenses.
The letter appealing for money says “it isn’t going to be a few people giving a large amount, but a whole lot of us giving a little that will allow the Pierce family to bring their daddy away from the dungeon where he died and give him the viking [sic] funeral they desire.”
Contributions are to be sent to Billy Roper in Russellville, Ark. He’s the founder of a racist organization called White Revolution. He previously was an official in the neo-Nazi National Alliance, and a member of the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens. The day of the 9/11 terror attacks, Roper emailed the National Alliance membership that “anyone who is willing to drive a plane into a building to kill jews [sic] is alright [sic] by me. I wish our members had half as much testicular fortitude.”
For those racists unsure of how much to give for Pierce’s Viking sendoff, Blood & Honour has helpful suggestions. Those who have had “a fortunate year” may want to give at the Gold level — $100. A $50 donation puts you at the somewhat less elite Silver level, and Bronze is a mere $35.
If that’s too lavish for some racists’ budgets, there is the “Patriot” level for $25 — “the number of years Bruce Pierce was locked up in a ZOG [Zionist Occupation Government] dungeon for our race, while others might prefer to give the ‘Silent Brotherhood’ level for $13, for the number of holes Alan Berg grew in 1984,” the Blood & Honour missive suggests.
With a heart-rending appeal like that, it’s hard to see how tykes with cleft palates in need of surgery and exquisite tigers threatened with extinction have a chance for donors’ hard-earned dollars. And if there is a huge outpouring of cash for the Pierce racist rites, the additional dough “will be used to aid other Order members who still survive in prison.”
U.S. Neo-Nazi, Back From Estonia, Bedevils Montana
01 year ago
The last time Hatewatch caught up with Craig Cobb, the veteran neo-Nazi and creator of the white nationalist website Podblanc, he was about to be kicked out of his adopted home country of Estonia. That happened. Now, it turns out that Estonia’s loss is Montana’s pain.
Cobb has surfaced in Big Sky Country, where he and fellow white supremacist Zachariah Harp are scheduled to show a Holocaust denial film at the Kalispell Public Library on Sept. 9. A room there was reserved in the name of the “Creativity Religion.”
Cobb and Harp are followers of The Creativity Movement, a self-styled racist and anti-Semitic religious organization that worships no deity, but proclaims that “what is good for the white race is the highest virtue, and what is bad for the white race is the ultimate sin.” (The Creativity Movement is the new name for what was once known as the World Church of the Creator. Its 1990s leader, Matt Hale, is now serving a 40-year prison sentence for soliciting the murder of a federal judge.)
Cobb, 58, founded Podblanc in 2007 after he moved from the United States to Estonia. Modeled after YouTube, the site featured videos with content that included combat handgun training and instructions on how to make Molotov cocktails and other explosive devices, and extolled “lone wolf” terrorism, including hate-crime murders of non-whites and Jews. One popular and deeply disturbing video on Podblanc, which is currently inactive, showed Russian neo-Nazis beheading and shooting Asiatic immigrants. Another featured a log-wielding skinhead bashing in the head of an African immigrant.
One of Podblanc’s avid viewers was Keith Luke, a mentally disturbed young man in Brockton, Mass. Luke is now awaiting trial on charges of shooting to death two West African immigrants the day after President Obama’s inauguration in January 2009, and attempting to kill a third after raping her. During a videotaped interview with detectives, Luke said he spent most of his free time on racist websites, especially Podblanc, which he said “spoke the truth about the demise of the white race.” At his first court hearing, Luke appeared with a bloody swastika freshly cut into his forehead with a prison razor.
After Estonian officials ordered him out of the country last year — because he was seen as a threat to public safety and morals, Cobb said — he showed up in Finland. He was soon deported back to Estonia, where he was jailed, then released and banned from the country for 10 years. From there, Cobb apparently went to Vancouver, had trouble with Canadian authorities because of his white supremacist activities, and moved to Montana.
Harp is a Kalispell native and the son of a former Montana state legislator. He has “been a central player in the Flathead Valley’s white supremacist movement for some time,” said Travis McAdam, executive director of the anti-racist Montana Human Rights Network. The Flathead Valley is in the northwest corner of the state, near Glacier National Park. “There’s been a tremendous upswing in white supremacist activity in the Flathead area over the past two years and adding somebody like Craig Cobb to the mix is not a good sign,” McAdam said.
Cobb is only the latest white supremacist to reserve a room at the Kalispell library to show Holocaust denial films. In the past few months, Karl Gharst has done the same thing under the name of the “Kalispell Christian Alliance.” Gharst’s group also has booked a library room for another film next Tuesday.
Gharst has his own unpleasant history. In 2004, he pleaded guilty to charges stemming from his threatening a social worker who he called a “greasy, turd-colored mongrel” and a “wild savage from the Flathead Indian Reservation,” according to the Daily Interlake newspaper. He also was one of two members of the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations to run for City Council in Hayden, Idaho, in 2003. Both men lost, with Gharst getting a mere 42 votes. Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler — whom Gharst was living with at the time — ran for mayor in the same election and was similarly trounced, getting less than 2% of the votes cast. Butler died the following year.
Members of another white separatist group, Kalispell Pioneer Little Europe, worked with Gharst in organizing the previous film showings. One of them, April Gaede, was arrested along with her husband on misdemeanor charges stemming from a scuffle with somebody outside the library at one of the showings. Gaede, who lives in Kalispell, enjoyed a brief moment of national infamy several years ago as the neo-Nazi stage mom for her teenage twin daughters’ singing duo, Prussian Blue. More recently, she has tried her hand at being a white nationalist matchmaker.
So many neo-Nazis reserving rooms at the Kalispell library has caused some grief for Kim Crowley, director of the Flathead County Library System. “We do get calls from people who are upset. There is some confusion that we are sponsoring the programs.” Now the library requires groups reserving library rooms to give the sponsor’s name and state on their fliers that the library isn’t sponsoring their event. But the groups have been allowed to continue their activities. Crowley says the library is the equivalent of a town square, where people of varying viewpoints can exercise their First Amendment right to speak their minds. “It’s my duty to allow the room to be used for almost anything people want to use it for,” she says.
If Karl Gharst’s experience is a good barometer, Craig Cobb will see far more protesters than sympathizers when he stages his event — thanks in large part to the work of McAdams’ group. The three previous Nazi revisionist films drew perhaps six to 15 people each time, Crowley says. Sign-carrying protesters turned out at all three of them, with more than 250 showing up most recently, Crowley says.
Anti-Latino Hate Crimes Seen From Baltimore to Arizona
01 year ago
Record-breaking high temperatures have been the norm this summer in the United States and other countries. But for Latinos, it’s been even hotter than the thermometer suggests, with one after another targeted for hate crimes around the country. Here’s a sampling of recent incidents:
- Early last Saturday in Baltimore, Martin Rayez, 51, was beaten to death with a piece of wood. The man arrested for the crime, Jermaine Holley, 19, allegedly confessed and told police that he “hated Hispanics.” He has been treated in the past for schizophrenia. The killing occurred in East Baltimore, the scene of other recent attacks on Latinos.
- Since April, there have been 11 assaults on Mexicans in the Staten Island city of Port Richmond, which has a burgeoning Latino population. All but one of the attacks is considered a bias-motivated crime carried out by blacks attacking Mexicans. There have been 26 suspected hate crimes on Staten Island this year, compared to 11 by this time last year, according to a story in The Los Angeles Times. For all of New York City, the numbers are 222 and 125, respectively.
- An Auburn, Wash. man was charged with violating the state’s hate crimes law last month after he allegedly pointed a gun at three Latino neighbors and threatened to shoot them. A police report stated that after his arrest, Thomas Hanson, 63, complained that his neighbors “were disrespecting him in his own country.” (They had asked him to turn down the volume on his music.) Hanson also sent U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) 238 E-mails, many of them ranting about illegal immigration and immigrants from Mexico.
- In June, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office in Phoenix said that the murder of a Mexican-American man a month earlier was a hate crime. Gary Thomas Kelley is charged with second-degree murder in the killing of Juan Varela. He also is charged with menacing Varela’s brother with a gun. “Hurry up and go back to Mexico or you’re gonna die,” Kelley shouted at Varela before shooting him in the neck, police said. The dead man was a third-generation, native-born American.
These incidents and others appear to be part of a general trend that has been in the making for several years. Anti-Latino crimes increased in each of the four years from 2003 through 2007, before dropping back slightly in 2008, according to FBI national hate crime statistics (2009 figures have not yet been compiled). In recent months, politicians and others have made statements that demonize Latinos and likely contribute to the atmosphere of violence. Two of the most outrageous recent examples: Texas Republican Congressmen Louie Gohmert and Debbie Riddle both claimed that pregnant terrorists plan to sneak into America to give birth to future terrorists who will automatically become U.S. citizens and eventually “help destroy our way of life,” as Gohmert put it. Both representatives claimed that former FBI officials divulged the terrorist baby threat to them. CNN asked Tom Fuentes, who served as the FBI’s assistant director in the office of international operations from 2004 to 2008 about the claims by Gohmert and Riddle. “There was never a credible report — or any report, for that matter … to indicate that there was such a plan for these terror babies to be born,” he said.
Debunking myths like these about Hispanic immigrants won’t likely deter new ones from cropping up like stubborn weeds. And in today’s overheated immigration climate, it’s a good bet more Hispanics will be beaten, even killed, as the debate — if it can be called that — rages on.
Conservatives’ Friendly Gestures Toward Gays Infuriate Far Right
01 year ago
by Larry Keller
in Anti-Gay
Conservative columnist and author Ann Coulter’s decision to be the featured speaker next month at a “Homocon” gathering of homosexual conservatives has gotten her axed as a keynote speaker at a meeting of prominent far-right personalities. Joseph Farah’s decision to cut Coulter from his Taking America Back National Conference in Miami next month is only the latest pushback by some on the far right who are incensed and worried by recent gains made by the gay rights movement.
The organization GOProud announced last week that Coulter had accepted an offer to speak at its first annual Homocon party in New York City on Sept. 25 despite her lengthy history of slurring gays. GOProud is a political organization of conservative gay Republicans.
Farah — the founder of the right-wing WorldNetDaily (WND) website that is organizing the Miami conference — dropped Coulter from the program because of her upcoming speech to the gay Republicans. Coulter had been scheduled to give a talk entitled “The Invasion of the Godless Barbarians” on Sept. 17 at the WND conference. Other speakers on tap at that event include such far right stalwarts as U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), former Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo, conservative activist and frequent political candidate Alan Keyes and conspiracy-minded author Jerome Corsi. Right after the conference, WND has a second scheduled event featuring far-right conservative speakers — this time during a weeklong Caribbean cruise at the peak of hurricane season.
“Ultimately, as a matter of principle, it would not make sense for us to have Ann speak to a conference about ‘taking America back’ when she clearly does not recognize that the ideals to be espoused there simply do not include the radical and very ‘unconservative’ agenda represented by GOProud,” Farah said in a WND story headlined “WND dumps Ann Coulter from Miami due to Homoconflict.” “The drift of the conservative movement to a brand of materialistic libertarianism is one of the main reasons we planned this conference from the beginning.”
The WND story quotes Farah asking Coulter, “Do you not understand you are legitimizing a group that is fighting for same-sex marriage and open homosexuality in the military — not to mention the idea that sodomy is just an alternate lifestyle?” Coulter’s response, according to the story, is that she often speaks to groups she doesn’t endorse. “I’m sure I agree with GOProud more than I do with at least half of my college audiences,” Coulter is quoted as saying. “But in any event, giving a speech is not an endorsement of every position held by the people I’m speaking to. I was going to speak for you guys, I think you’re nuts on the birther thing (though I like you otherwise!).” (WND has published dozens upon dozens of stories suggesting that President Obama was not born in the United States — a contention that has been dismissed by all but the most conspiracy-obsessed on the far right.)
Coulter’s response didn’t mollify Farah, who complained that GOProud “is about infiltration of the conservative movement and dividing it from within with twisted and dangerous ideas way out of the mainstream of American opinion.” He added that GOProud “is exploiting its coup in getting Ann Coulter to speak” at its event. Even so, Coulter will remain a weekly columnist for WND, Farah said, because columnists are held to a different standard than speakers.
Farah isn’t the only conservative in a tizzy over recent developments concerning homosexuals. Accuracy in Media’s Cliff Kincaid wrote a few days ago of his chagrin that Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn and Texas Republican Congressman Pete Sessions will attend a national fundraising dinner next month sponsored by the Log Cabin Republicans, another gay and lesbian activist organization. Cornyn and Sessions, Kincaid noted, are in charge of helping Republican candidates for the Senate and House get elected. The headline on his column: “Is the GOP Becoming the Gay Old Party?”
In the same column, Kincaid lamented that new Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan “has a militant pro-homosexual orientation in such matters as opposition to military recruiters on campus because of the Pentagon’s homosexual exclusion policy.” Nor was he pleased with the “tyrannical ruling” by U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker overturning California’s anti-gay marriage Proposition 8. “As was the case of Kagan, there are reports that Walker is a secret homosexual,” Kincaid added.
So it’s no surprise that Kincaid also was unhappy that Coulter agreed to speak at the Homocon event. Perhaps implying something about Coulter’s sexual orientation, he took care to point out that Coulter is 49 years old and unmarried.
Meanwhile, Laurie Higgins, an official at the vituperatively anti-gay Illinois Family Institute, bemoaned the fact that Illinois Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mark Kirk is an “alleged homosexual” and that Glenn Beck “has proclaimed that legalized homosexual marriage wouldn’t harm America.”
It’s all too much for Higgins. “True conservatives need to rethink their cowardly refusal to address the inherent immorality of homosexual practice and their deeply flawed strategy of calling for a moratorium on ‘social issues,’” she wrote. “Once homosexuality-affirming policies are enacted, they will become nigh unto impossible to reverse.”
What Higgins longs for is a return to the days when gays were widely condemned. “There was something profoundly good for society about the prior stigmatization of homosexual practice and all other immoral behaviors,” she wrote. “When men and women were ashamed of homosexuality and cross-dressing (along with fornication and cavalier divorce), there was less of it.” More important, Higgins added, “when homosexuals were ‘in the closet,’ (along with fornicators, polyamorists, cross-dressers, and ‘transsexuals’), they weren’t acquiring and raising children.”