Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
Sonia Scherr
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Columnist on White Nationalist Website Appears on Fox News
01 year ago
by Sonia Scherr
in anti-immigrant
A columnist for the white nationalist website VDARE appeared as a guest on Fox News this week.
As Media Matters reported, Allan Wall, a longtime VDARE contributor, spoke with Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy on Monday about immigration. Doocy introduced Wall as a U.S. citizen who lived in Mexico for 17 years while teaching English. At the end of the interview, Doocy mentioned that Wall writes for VDARE but failed to provide any information about the website.
In fact, VDARE features articles by extremists such as Jared Taylor, editor of the racist American Renaissance magazine; Kevin MacDonald, a psychology professor at California State University, Long Beach, who argues that Jews are genetically driven to undermine the power of whites; and the late Sam Francis, who edited the newspaper of the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens. Founded in 1999, VDARE raised about $53,000 from donors during an emergency appeal this spring after a major foundation cut off its funding.
Wall’s columns are preoccupied with what he sees as a Hispanic takeover of America. “If present population trends continue, within about three decades, the historical White, English-speaking majority will no longer be the majority, due to mass immigration and the high birthrate of U.S. Hispanics,” he wrote in a March 23, 2009, column. “As a people, we never directly chose this destiny, nor were we even asked about it. But we’re expected to pay for it, and be happy about it, as our nation is transformed into part of Latin America before our very eyes.”
He complained in a Feb. 1, 2007, column that “inter-governmental agreements are moving us closer to some sort of North American Union” — a conspiracy theory popular among nativist extremists. “Today our leaders apparently see no problem in merging us with Mexico, despite the differences between our societies,” Wall wrote.
Recently, he has portrayed as anti-American all who criticize the new Arizona law targeting undocumented immigrants, a law that the SPLC believes will lead to the racial profiling of Latinos. “Anybody who opposes SB 1070 is supporting illegal immigration — and the abolition of America,” he wrote on April 27.
Wall suggests that Hispanic critics of the law, in particular, are somehow disloyal. “Even rich, successful Hispanics, and organized Republican Hispanics, are attacking Arizona’s attempt to protect its own people from illegal immigration,” he wrote. “Don’t these vocal Hispanics, insofar as they self-identify as such, betray a deep-seated resentment of our country?”
Likewise, Wall asserted in an Oct. 21, 2009, column that astronaut Jose Hernandez “clearly does not identify with the United States of America, but with Mexico.” He called Hernandez, the U.S.-born son of migrant farm workers, an “anchor baby astronaut.”
Wall appeared on Fox & Friends to discuss his reaction to Mexican President Filipe Calderon’s criticism last week of the Arizona law. (He thought it was “way out of order” given Mexico’s tough immigration policy.) It’s not the first time that Fox & Friends has used dubious sources while discussing the Arizona law. Last month, the show cited the purported number of murders committed by undocumented immigrants annually. As it turned out, the figure was almost certainly inaccurate; it originated with Human Events contributor Mac Johnson, who based it solely on the murder rates in immigrants’ home countries.
Racist Skins Renounce Busted IKA Leader
01 year ago
Poor Ron Edwards. Even racist skinheads don’t want to hang out with the former Klan leader.
Edwards — the Imperial Klans of America (IKA) founder who defended himself against a successful lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center — was arrested last week on federal drug charges, including methamphetamine distribution.
That was too much for the Supreme White Alliance (SWA), a skinhead group that had been assisting the IKA with its annual hate rock gathering, Nordic Fest. Less than a week before this year’s Nordic Fest — planned for Memorial Day weekend at Edwards’ compound in Dawson Springs, Ky. — the SWA announced it would no longer be involved with the event. “The Supreme White Alliance drops it’s [sic] support of the Imperial Klans of America, Ron Edwards, and Nordic Fest due to current events,” SWA Vice President Richard Kidd, a former IKA member, wrote on Sunday. “Even though innocent until proven guilty, in order to preserve our reputation as a club for our members, the SWA has always been a drug free club and always will be. This is not intended to disrespect Ron Edwards or the IKA, but we will not be affiliated with them until all legal charges have been dropped.”
The SWA, which previously considered its leader to be Edwards’ son, Steven, wasn’t the only group to distance itself from Nordic Fest. Blood and Honour USA, a coalition of several skinhead groups, posted a similar message Saturday on a web forum: “After discussions among the various crew heads in the US that make up Blood and Honour USA, we have collectively decided that at this time, given the amount of evidence — not only that which led to his being charged — but also that of individuals that have witnessed behaviours of this type — that Blood and Honour USA is pulling any and all support from the Nordicfest music festival and also any and all support of the IKA.”
Blood and Honour had stern words for Edwards, who was released Friday on a $25,000 bond. “Drugs, drug users, and those that market them cannot and will not be tolerated – regardless of who the persons are that are involved. Indeed it is even worse when someone that has held themselves up as a standard of white nationalism becomes caught up in this ****** nonsense.”
In addition, Nordic Fest participants won’t be able to advertise on Stormfront, the leading white supremacist web forum. Richard Lindstrom, a Stormfront administrator and former board member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance, announced the ban on Saturday.
Ron Edwards has other legal woes: In 2008, the Southern Poverty Law Center won a $2.5 million judgment for a teenager who was beaten by IKA members. Edwards, one of two defendants in that lawsuit, is appealing the verdict.
In a message on its website today, the SWA sounded a more empathetic note. “Drugs are a weakness that we as Aryan Warriors must overcome,” wrote National Treasurer James Reeves. “The effects of Meth, speed, cocaine, marijuana, etc. have taken a toll on our country and our people that if not stopped now, may not be stoppable in the future. It is tearing families apart at the seams. If anyone does have a problem, seek proffesional [sic] help or help from one of us. We are a family and we are here to help each other.”
IKA Boss’ Latest Travail: Drug Trafficking Charges
01 year ago
The founder of a once-thriving Klan group has recently battled a major lawsuit, money woes and, now, federal drug charges.
Ron Edwards, the 50-year-old former leader of the Imperial Klans of America (IKA), appeared in U.S. District Court in Owensboro, Ky., today on charges of possession with intent to distribute and distribution of controlled substances, including methamphetamine, according to court documents. He was also charged with possession of a firearm to further a drug trafficking crime. Edwards’ girlfriend, Christina “Chrissy” Ann Gillette, was charged with possession with intent to distribute and distribution of methamphetamine.
The drug charges will likely further damage Edwards’ reputation in the white supremacist movement, where some supporters have accused him of keeping donations meant for his Klan group.
Edwards, of Dawson Springs, Ky., led a particularly dangerous Klan group that welcomes violent skinheads and declares on its website that it “hates Muds, spics, kikes and niggers.” In an effort to cripple the organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center sued Edwards in 2007, after members of his Klan group were convicted of attacking a 16-year-old U.S. citizen of Panamanian descent because they thought he was an “illegal spic.”
Edwards showed up to a deposition with the words “Fuck S.P.L.C.” tattooed on his head. In November 2008, a jury awarded a $2.5 million judgment to the victim; the verdict is currently under appeal. Last year, the group had five groups in four states, down from 23 chapters in 17 states in 2006. Though smaller, the IKA remains active and continues to hold Nordic Fest, its annual hate rock gathering held on Memorial Day weekend at its compound and headquarters in Dawson Springs.
An FBI affidavit indicates that Edwards’ was allegedly dealing drugs shortly after his civil trial in Brandenburg, Ky. The affidavit gives the following account: On Jan. 6, 2009, Edwards pocketed $800 after selling 120 prescription Lortab pain pills to an undercover officer during a meeting in Bardston, Ky. (The pills contained hydrocodone, a controlled substance.) During the drug sale, Edwards kept a semi-automatic pistol concealed under his leg and then behind his back. On Aug. 13, 2009, Gillette, Edwards’ girlfriend, sold methamphetamine for $300 to a “cooperating witness” who met with her in Central City, Ky. On Sept. 2, 2009, in Dawson Springs, Edwards did the same, earning $500. And on Jan. 16, 2010, Edwards and the cooperating witness met again in Dawson Springs, where Edwards gave the witness 70 Lortab pills in exchange for $560.
Both Edwards and Gillette were released today on $25,000 bond issues. The conditions of release require them to remain under home detention and to avoid contact with each other. They are scheduled to appear in court again on June 24.
Anti-Immigration ‘Labor’ Group Misleads on Job Loss
01 year ago
by Sonia Scherr
in anti-immigrant
A front group for several nativist organizations is airing television ads in Arizona that link undocumented immigrants to high unemployment.
The Coalition for the Future American Worker is trying to capitalize on momentum from the harsh new Arizona law targeting undocumented immigrants, according to a news release from coalition member Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS). The 10-member coalition, which emphasizes immigration’s purported negative effects on American workers, includes two organizations that the Southern Poverty Law Center considers hate groups: the American Immigration Control Foundation and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). FAIR’s webmaster, Karl Filippini, serves as the registrant and administrator of the coalition’s website.
The ads — which are running in markets nationwide in addition to Arizona — contend that undocumented immigrants are taking away jobs from Americans at a time of high unemployment. In one ad, an unshaven man sits at a dining room table while a woman holding a child briefly appears in the background. “The president is doing next to nothing about 8 million illegal foreign workers while millions of Americans are jobless,” the man says. “I know. I’m one of them.” In another ad, a man wearing a sports jacket tells viewers that he doesn’t need 30 seconds to explain how to put Americans back to work because the answer is simple: Start enforcing immigration laws. Both ads urge people to call the White House to convey that message.
The ads are misleading, however. Most scholars haven’t found a link between immigration —legal or illegal — and job loss, according to an article published last week by Factcheck.org, a nonpartisan project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. “Study after study has shown that immigrants grow the economy, expanding demand for goods and services that the foreign-born workers and their families consume, and thereby creating jobs. There is even broad agreement among economists that while immigrants may push down wages for some, the overall effect is to increase average wages for American-born workers.”
The nativist coalition has rolled out other ad campaigns in an effort to influence immigration policy. In 2007, for instance, the coalition ran an ad featuring a couple sitting at a kitchen table with a baby crying in the background. The husband tells his wife that he failed to get a job because “they hired all foreign workers.” The coalition also uses other approaches. During a 2004 Texas congressional race, it ran television ads that included images of dark-skinned men loitering on street corners and running from police cars. The ads were intended to help defeat candidates who supported guest-worker programs and other immigration reforms. Ultimately, however, both the Republican and Democratic candidates denounce the ads as racially inflammatory and asked that television stations not run them.
Ironically, the Coalition for the Future American Worker counts only one union among its members: The Communications Workers of America, Local 4250. By contrast, the AFL-CIO, a federation of 56 national and international labor unions, has called for the repeal of the Arizona law, which gives police broad powers to detain those suspected of being in the country without documents and is widely seen as the nation’s harshest measure against illegal immigration. The AFL-CIO said the law will lead to racial profiling and “severely undermines workers’ rights.”
Strange Bedfellows See Affirmative Action in Beauty Contest
01 year ago
Does an ardent Jewish neo-conservative ever agree with an anti-Semite who despises neo-conservatives?
We didn’t think so, until the Miss USA contest showed that Muslim-bashing author Daniel Pipes and racist radio host James Edwards do indeed share some common ground. The men suggested on their respective blogs that 24-year-old Rima Fakih of Dearborn, Mich., captured the pageant crown on Sunday because of her Muslim religion (Pipes) or her Arab ethnicity (Edwards).
Edwards, the “Political Cesspool” host who has claimed that white women are physically superior, griped that he wasn’t surprised by Fakih’s win. “It’s pretty much a federal law now that beauty pageant winners have to be non-white,” he wrote in his Monday blog post, “and now that Arabs are the latest ‘oppressed minority,’ they’re finally getting their place at the top of the quota totem pole.”
Meanwhile, Pipes — whose resume includes posts at elite universities, a stint at the State Department, and a presidential appointment to the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace — made a remarkably similar point. In an article titled “Affirmative Action in Beauty Contests?” posted on his website Sunday, Pipes posted the names (and photos) of six Muslim women who had won pageants in America and Europe over the past five years.
“They are all attractive,” he conceded, “but this surprising frequency of Muslims winning beauty pageants makes me suspect an odd form of affirmative action. My suspicion is borne out by the selection of Anisah Rasheed as Miss A&T at North Carolina Agriculture and Technical State University.” Pipes went on to quote from an article about Rasheed’s coronation that described her tiara sitting atop her hijab, the headscarf traditionally worn by Muslim women. (None of the other Muslim contest winners in Pipes’ article were pictured wearing the hijab.)
In an update posted Monday on his website, Pipes shared three non-critical responses from readers who wrote to him about the article. They included the following item, which Pipes presented without comment: “No surprise here. Affirmative action was first applied in beauty contests for black women to win in the 1980s, then it was the turn of Latin, brown skinned women, and now it’s Muslims. That’s why most people ignore these rigged ‘events.’ They are money losers and require controversy.”
Elsewhere, however, bloggers were taken aback by Pipes’ article. David Weigel, who writes the “Right Now” blog for The Washington Post, had this response: “Wow.” A spokeswoman for the Miss USA pageant told The Daily Beast, an online publication, that she didn’t believe Fakih’s victory had “anything to do with affirmative action.” (Actually, though she’s from a Shiite family, Fakih attended Catholic schools growing up and celebrates both Muslim and Christian faiths with her family, according to The Associated Press.)
Late Monday, Pipes posted another update dismissing the outcry provoked by his blog item. “Somebody doth protest too much,” he wrote.
Pipes’ post wasn’t the only one to suggest that Fakih benefited because of her religion. “I just wonder if this whole contest is rigged,” anti-Islam blogger Debbie Schlussel wrote on Sunday. “I have a feeling that it is. Clearly, there is affirmative action for Muslim women in beauty pageants and other such ‘contests.’” In a blog post Tuesday, Schlussel called Fakih “Miss Hezbollah” and stated that “her family is chock full of top Hezbollah terrorists.”
We thank Hatewatch reader Mason Green for the tip that inspired this blog post.
Fringe Nativist Sees Conspiracy in Murder Charge
01 year ago
Laine Lawless, the Mexican flag-burning leader of the vigilante group Border Guardians, has been one of the few anti-immigration leaders to support accused nativist killer Shawna Forde.
Soon, those who can’t get enough of justiceforshawnaforde.com, Lawless’ unabashedly pro-Forde website, will be able to read her book about the case. The soon-to-be-released Blonde on the Border: The Government’s Case Against the Minutemen promises to dish out more dubious defenses of Forde, who is charged with murder in the killings of a Latino man and his 9-year-old daughter during a home invasion on May 30 in Arivaca, Ariz. Forde led Minuteman American Defense (MAD), an Everett, Wash.-based splinter group of the Minuteman movement, whose adherents conduct armed patrols of the border.
Based on a short excerpt that’s published online, the book appears to rehash Lawless’ theory that Forde is the victim of a government conspiracy and a racist, sexist media campaign. Lawless, who asserts on her website that Forde was “racially profiled” and that she is a “political agenda prisoner,” again suggests in the book’s title that Forde’s prosecution is the result of a government vendetta against the Minutemen. In the excerpt, she also calls the details about Forde’s alleged involvement in the killings a “left-wing media-manufacture.” Lawless is virtually alone in this view: After the murders, Minuteman leaders scrambled to distance themselves from Forde, who faces the death penalty if convicted in the gruesome double murder. Even before the deaths in Arivaca, Forde was a controversial figure in Minuteman circles because of her supposed efforts to take on dangerous drug smugglers and because of her claims — never substantiated — that she’d been the target of a series of violent attacks. (Lawless also has been a lightening rod: In 2006, she privately wrote the nation’s largest neo-Nazi group urging members to harass and assault undocumented immigrants. She later told the Arizona Daily Star that the E-mail was fabricated.)
In the book’s online excerpt, Lawless writes about accompanying Minuteman Chuck Stonex to a home in Arivaca, where Stonex treated Forde associate Jason Bush for a minor gunshot wound. (Bush was allegedly shot in the leg by a victim of the home invasion, though Forde and Bush told Stonex that a smuggler fired at him during a desert patrol.) There are details about Stonex’s “tiny Chihuahua dog” and the hug Lawless gave Stonex that she wished she could take back because he didn’t support Forde after learning about the murders.
Don’t expect accomplished prose, however. As the Arizona Daily Star notes in a blog post on the book, Lawless used to pen erotic fan fiction about the warrior princess Xena, and Blonde on the Border seems influenced by these earlier writings. Take these paragraphs about Lawless’ first meeting with Forde:
“It was an odd kind of situation, meeting Shawna Forde while she was with Jason Bush, who had a bullet wound. Over the first couple of months of 2009, I had only talked to her on the phone and emailed her. I remember saying how glad I was to meet her, giving her a hug, and feeling her hug me back.
“The memory that stands out most for me of that night was Shawna bringing me 2 glasses of green Gatorade with ice. I rode the 25 miles to Arivaca from the freeway in Chuck Stonex’s Blazer with no air conditioning, and it was HOT. I was sweating, and my face was probably flushed. I guess Shawna thought I needed something cold to drink.
“It was STILL HOT when we left, even though it was after 9 PM. I embraced Shawna as we said goodbye. …”
The case against Forde is no warrior princess fantasy, however. And Lawless may have to discuss what she knows in a much different and far more intimidating forum than a website or book: She’s on the prosecution’s witness list for Forde’s trial, according to the Arizona Daily Star. Her court testimony, unlike Blonde on the Border, might prove interesting.
Remembering Law Enforcement Victims of Right-Wing Extremists
01 year ago
by Sonia Scherr
in Extremist Crime
More law enforcement officers were killed last year by right-wing extremists than in any other year since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
Six officers were slain in 2009 by those subscribing to far-right views, making the first year of Obama’s presidency the deadliest since 1995 for extremist attacks against police officers. The fallen officers are among those being remembered during National Police Week, which runs through Saturday with events in Washington, D.C. They include three Pittsburgh police officers killed by a racist and anti-Semitic gunman, two Florida sheriff’s deputies who were shot by a man with militia interests, and a security guard who was murdered by a white supremacist at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. (For a complete list of officers slain by radical rightists since 1995, see here and here.)
Since 1990, law enforcement officers have comprised nearly 15% of the victims of far-right killings — or 49 out of more than 400 fatalities, according to a report published last month by the University of Maryland. Local and state officers have accounted for more than 70% of these law enforcement deaths. Only 1995 saw as many officers killed by extremists as last year, with six officers dying, five of them in the Oklahoma City bombing.
Far-right extremists were energized last year by the election of the first black president, concerns about the possibility of tighter gun laws, the immigration debate, and the poor economy. Interestingly, the three killers of law enforcement officers all expressed unhappiness with the president. A friend of Richard Poplawski, who is charged with murdering the Pittsburgh officers, told The Associated Press that the unemployed 23-year-old feared “the Obama gun ban that’s on the way.” The wife of U.S. Army Reservist Joshua Cartwright, who fatally shot the two Okaloosa County sheriff’s deputies before being killed himself, told officials that her husband was “severely disturbed” by Obama’s election. (Cartwright was also interested in militia groups.) And James von Brunn, the 88-year-old Holocaust museum shooter, wrote in a notebook found in his car that “Obama was created by Jews. Obama does what his Jew owners tell him to do,” according to a police affidavit.
Von Brunn’s victim, museum guard Stephen T. Johns, was among the fallen officers remembered at a memorial service in Washington D.C. this week. Johns was fatally shot on June 10, 2009, as he opened the museum door for von Brunn, a longtime white supremacist who later died in prison while awaiting trial. D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier, quoted by The Associated Press, said on Monday that Johns put himself between visitors and von Brunn, enabling other guards to incapacitate the shooter. “Officer Johns’ presence and gallant act on that fateful day saved countless lives,” she said.
The other law enforcement victims of far-right violence last year were:
- Stephen Mayhle, 29, and Paul Sciullo III, 37, both of whom were ambushed by Poplawski when they responded to a domestic disturbance at his mother’s home on April, 4, 2009. Eric Kelly, 41, was shot by Poplawski while trying to help his fellow officers.
- Deputies Burt Lopez and Warren “Skip” York, both 45, who were killed by Cartwright on April 25, 2009, while responding to a domestic violence call.
Fox Uses Dubious Stats to Demonize Undocumented Immigrants
01 year ago
by Sonia Scherr
in anti-immigrant
Fox News made the alarming claim this morning that 2,158 Americans are murdered every year by undocumented immigrants.
Problem is, it’s almost certainly wrong.
In response to our request for comment, a Fox News spokeswoman said she would look into precisely where that number came from. (We will update this post when we hear from her.) However, the show cited as its source “FSM” which appears to be shorthand for Family Security Matters, a website that frequently publishes breathless “exclusives” such as the one about Latinos titled, “Illegal Aliens Bring A Taliban Culture to the United States.”
As we reported in the fall 2008 Intelligence report, FSM promoted the 2,158 figure in a February 2007 article titled “Illegal Aliens Kill More Americans than Iraq War.” The FSM article attributes its data to a story on the far-right WorldNetDaily website, which in turn cites Human Events contributor Mac Johnson. In 2005, Johnson claimed — based, absurdly, on murder rates in immigrants’ home countries — that undocumented immigrants kill 1,806 to 2,510 people every year. Applying that claim to the FBI’s most recent murder total (16,272 in 2008) would mean that the undocumented, who number about 12 million people, or 4% of the U.S. population, are responsible for 11.1% to 15.4% of U.S. murders. In other words, Johnson is saying that undocumented immigrants murder U.S. citizens at a rate nearly three to four times that of the general population.
Fox apparently relied on that dubious research during its morning show, Fox & Friends. As host Gretchen Carlson interviewed a guest about the new Arizona law targeting undocumented immigrants, the words “2,158 killed by illegals every year” appeared repeatedly on the screen. The guest, 9/11 Families for a Secure America Board Member Ed Kowalski, also told Carlson on camera that undocumented immigrants murder an estimated 2,200 Americans annually.
Kowalski’s niece, 17-year-old Elizabeth Butler, was murdered by an undocumented immigrant in 2005 — and we do not mean to diminish his grief or the problem of violent crime. However, his implication that the new Arizona law will make the state safer does not seem to be supported by the data. Even with relatively large numbers of undocumented immigrants, the rates of both violent crimes and property crimes in Arizona have been falling since 2002, according to the Immigration Policy Center. A 2008 report from the conservative Americas Majority Foundation found that, in recent years, crime declined the most in states with the biggest immigration growth, including Arizona.
At a news conference last week, Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris disputed the claim that the new law will help police do their jobs. “Proponents of this legislation have repeatedly said that the new law provides a tool for law enforcement,” he said on April 30. “But I don’t really believe that that’s true or accurate.” He concluded: ”It takes officers away from doing what our main core mission of local law enforcement is, and that’s to make our communities safe and enforce our criminal codes in that effort.”
Anti-Semitic Pub Cribs Copy from ‘Elite-Controlled Big Media Monopoly’
01 year ago
by Sonia Scherr
in Anti-Semitic
American Free Press, the anti-Semitic weekly that bills itself as “America’s Last Real Newspaper,” insists that it is battling a mainstream media secretly in the thrall of powerful globalists.
A statement on its website screams “THE MEDIA IS THE ENEMY.” It continues: “That’s why American Free Press is right here on Capitol Hill taking up the challenge against this enemy. We’re in the forefront of the battle to reclaim America.”
Except, perhaps, when American Free Press is plagiarizing from the enemy. A story in the newspaper’s April 26 issue, titled “Sheriff Tells Border Towns to Start Arming Themselves,” appears to have been largely cribbed from National Public Radio’s website. The story — about fears that Mexican drug violence could cross the border into America — carries the byline of Free Press Assistant Editor Pat Shannan and nowhere gives credit to NPR. Yet 13 of the story’s 18 paragraphs are nearly identical to those in an April 9 NPR story called “Sheriff to Texas Border Town: ‘Arm Yourselves.’” And Shannon didn’t exactly overextend himself coming up with those remaining five paragraphs: They were first published in a March 28 article posted on KPHO.com, the website of a CBS affiliate in Phoenix, Ariz.
That’s not to say that Shannan — who has also written Free Press articles disputing Obama’s eligibility for the presidency and alleging that the government tried to cover up the truth about Sept 11 — didn’t do any work. He rearranged some paragraphs for the Free Press story, in addition to inserting a few words and deleting others. (The expletive “damn it” was excised from one quote that originally appeared in the NPR story.) Still, he seems to have missed a message on NPR’s website that forbids using quotes without attributing them to NPR.
American Free Press is the successor to the Spotlight, a newspaper published by Willis Carto’s anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby. Staffers did not respond to an E-mail, so we don’t know why they appropriated the words of the “elite-controlled Big Media Monopoly” without telling readers. Perhaps it’s all part of a plot hatched by the so-called Masters of the Media to control even America’s Last Real Newspaper.
Arizona Debate Unleashes New ‘Reconquista’ Accusations
01 year ago
As the debate intensifies over Arizona’s harsh new law aimed at undocumented immigrants, nativist groups are claiming that opponents of the measure support nothing less than the reconquest of the Southwest by Mexicans.
Though the myth of “la reconquista” — a purported secret Mexican conspiracy to take back part of the United States — has long pervaded the nativist movement, anti-immigrant groups recently have been using it to portray critics of the Arizona law as anti-American. The law, which detractors (including Southern Poverty Law Center lawyers) say would lead to racial profiling, gives police the authority to arrest people suspected of being undocumented if they have some other reason to make contact with them.
Some of the most overheated rhetoric came from Peter Brimelow, the British immigrant who runs the anti-immigrant hate site VDARE.com. In a VDARE.com post last week titled “Help VDARE.COM Resist [Raul] Grijalva’s Reconquista!,” Brimelow vilifies the U.S. representative from Arizona who vowed at a Phoenix rally to “overturn the power structure that created this unjust, racist law.” Brimelow asserts that “Grijalva is not an immigrant but a Mexican colonizer and what he’s against is not the ‘power structure’ — he’s against America.”
Pat Byrne, the executive director of the Patriots Coalition, another nativist group, also took aim at Grijalva. “Grijalva is supported by the same cast of characters who have crawled out of their political sewers to support his irredentist views,” Byrne wrote in an E-mail last weekend to followers. “Irredentist” means advocating the reclamation of territory formerly belonging to one’s country — presumably a reference to Grijalva’s supposed goal of returning part of the Southwest to Mexico. In an April 18 mass E-mail, Patriots Coalition President Al Garza (a former Minuteman leader) called another congressman, U.S. Rep. Luis Guitierrez (D-Ill.), “Mexico’s #1 reconquista agent.”
Not to be outdone, Glenn Spencer, who heads the American Border Patrol hate group, posted a picture of the United States on his website last Friday with a Mexican flag superimposed on the Southwest. “The Mayor of Los Angeles [Antonio Villaraigosa] is a lackey of the Mexican government,” Spencer wrote. “His [sic] has declared war on U.S. sovereignty.”
Jim Gilchrist, a founding father of the Minuteman movement and the leader of the Minuteman Project, also weighed in last week by attacking not just public figures but all undocumented immigrants. The headline on his website proclaimed, “Minuteman Project says: Illegal Aliens Trying to Strong Arm Arizona.” He continued: “The illegal aliens are proving our point. The Minutemen have for a long time held the line that illegal aliens haven’t come here to work but to colonize.”
Minuteman Project Executive Director Stephen Eichler also heads TeaParty.org — part of the libertarian-tinged grassroots protest movement — so perhaps his group’s overwrought defense of Arizona is no surprise. An E-mail to supporters asked: “Are we to guarantee domestic tranquility for the rest of the world while our own Citizens hide in their homes for fear of an invading army of trespassers?”