Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
Sonia Scherr
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Posts by Sonia Scherr
Murdered Racist Leader May Have Propositioned Killer
01 year ago
White supremacist Richard Barrett enthusiastically denigrated gays and blacks.
In 1994, he led an anti-gay rally in Boston after a St. Patrick’s Day parade was cancelled in response to a court order that forbade the exclusion of homosexual marchers. Six years earlier, he signed “The Forsyth County Covenant,” which asserted that “all efforts to make us a bilingual, bisexual or biracial society must be defeated.”
But Barrett, who died after allegedly propositioning a black man, may also have been gay. Rankin (Miss.) County Undersheriff Bryan Bailey testified in court today that Vincent McGee, who is accused of murdering Barrett last month, told investigators that the 67-year-old lawyer made sexual advances toward him, according to The Associated Press. Bailey said at McGee’s arraignment that McGee gave multiple statements about why he went to Barrett’s house in Pearl, Miss. The 22-year-old neighbor said both that he’d gone to Barrett’s home to use the computer so he could access his Facebook account and that he’d gone there to complain that Barrett owed him money for yard work he’d done. In one statement, McGee claimed he beat and stabbed Barrett after “Barrett dropped his pants and asked him to perform a sexual act,” the AP reported.
McGee could face the death penalty if convicted of Barrett’s murder. Prosecutors announced at the arraignment that the charges against him were upgraded to capital murder — murder while committing another crime — because McGee allegedly stole a wallet and gun from Barrett’s home. Firefighters found Barrett’s body in his home on April 22 after neighbors reported a fire there. McGee, who told the AP he didn’t know about Barrett’s racist activism, also faces arson charges in connection with the killing. Three people have been charged as accessories after the fact.
Some who study the white supremacist world said that Barrett’s alleged homosexuality, while ironic, is not that unusual.
“As remarkable as it may seem, the fact is that the radical right is thick with characters who exhibit the most extreme hypocrisy,” said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which publishes this blog. “It’s quite common to find savage gay-bashers like Richard Barrett who are secretly homosexual, Klan leaders who hide their black girlfriends, white supremacists who turn out to be biracial, and neo-Nazi ideologues who were raised as Jews. A good many of those who are most violent in their attacks are actually hiding what they see as a terrible and embarrassing secret.”
They include Leo Felton, an avowed “Aryan” revolutionary who in 2001 was convicted of conspiracy in a plot to blow up black and Jewish landmarks; two months later, it was revealed that one of Felton’s parents was black. William Potter Gale, who founded the anti-Semitic Posse Comitatus in the 1970s, was secretly descended from a long line of devout Jews. And in 1965, neo-Nazi Daniel Burros killed himself after The New York Times revealed that he had been a Jewish yeshiva student.
Barrett was long rumored to be gay in white supremacist circles. Several days after his death, the proprietor of the leading white supremacist web forum, Stormfront, called him “an obvious old queen.” “Ask anyone who ever met him,” Don Black wrote in a Stormfront post. “Or just visit his website, with all the shirtless skinhead pics he’d pulled from a gay skinhead site.”
Barrett was known for reaching out to young men and in recent years ran an online forum for skinheads. In December 1988, he hosted a weekend of paramilitary training for skinheads in Learned, Miss., according to the Anti-Defamation League. The few teenagers who attended tried to hit a picture of Martin Luther King Jr. during target practice, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger reported. He also hosted “The Spirit of America Day,” which for 40 years honored male high school athletes. The event was recognized repeatedly by Mississippi lawmakers, most recently in February.
Rachel Maddow Goes A-Steinin’
01 year ago
On its website, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) bills itself as a “reliable source of information” on immigration.
But FAIR President Dan Stein wasn’t exactly reliable on facts concerning his own organization when he appeared last night on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.” During the combative 15-minute interview, Stein claimed that FAIR never gave money to a group whose leaders included self-described white separatist Virginia Abernethy.
“We never gave that organization a dime,” Stein insisted. “And secondly, even if we were going to give them a dime, we wouldn’t have given them a dime with Virginia Abernethy associated with it.”
Maybe Stein should have checked FAIR’s website. When The Maddow Blog later fact-checked Stein, it found multiple references there to FAIR’s financial support for Protect Arizona Now, whose national advisory board was led by Abernethy. (PAN backed a successful 2004 ballot initiative that requires Arizonans to show proof of citizenship when voting and penalizes government workers who fail to report suspected undocumented immigrants seeking public benefits.) One FAIR news release (no longer on the organization’s website but accessible from an Internet archive) quoted none other than Stein touting FAIR’s role in PAN’s campaign. “Every dime that FAIR and these other organizations have raised to obtain signatures for Arizona’s PAN has been spent in Arizona to get signatures,” he said.
Stein also attempted to dismiss as irrelevant Maddow’s questions about FAIR founder — and current board member — John Tanton, who has made bigoted statements about Hispanics and advocated a European-American majority. (Much of Maddow’s most incendiary information on Tanton and FAIR came from research by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which publishes this blog; see here and here and here.) “We have a big tent,” Stein said. “People have lots of ideas.”
Maddow’s interview comes after FAIR took credit for writing a harsh new law in Arizona that critics including SPLC lawyers say would lead to racial profiling. The law, which has provoked a nationwide debate, allows police to arrest people merely because they’re suspected of being in the country illegally as long as the police have some other reason to make contact with them.
Rather than address the issues, Stein was reduced to blaming his favorite bugaboo, frequently accusing Maddow of using “talking points from discredited smear artists like those folks down in Alabama.”
We’ll take that as a compliment. Stein’s dubious performance last night has been mocked throughout the blogosphere. The Political Carnival website opined that “because of this interview (read: tussle; read: battle; read: slaughter), we have a new word: ‘Steined’ … as in, ‘You’ve been Steined by Rachel Maddow.’”
Soldiers Among Skinheads Charged in Brutal Beating of Homeless Man
01 year ago
by Sonia Scherr
in skinheads
Three soldiers are among a group of skinheads accused of severely beating a homeless man with baseball bats and pipes in Cincinnati.
Police have charged two Iraq war veterans, Pvt. Riley Feller, 24, and Spc. Travis Condor, 25, with the felony assault of 52-year-old John Johnson at a homeless encampment earlier this month, according to news accounts. Feller is with the 16th Cavalry Regiment at Fort Knox in Kentucky, while Condor is a member of the 82nd Airborne Division stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.
Michael Hesson, 24, who is not in the military, was arraigned Tuesday on the same charge. Authorities are looking for an unidentified fourth man, also believed to be a soldier. Johnson was treated overnight at a hospital for a head wound and other injuries suffered in the April 10 attack.
Cincinnati Detective Kip Dunagan told the Cincinnati’s TV station WKRC that the skinheads went looking for someone to assault. “‘At one point, one of the suspects said, ‘Let’s go mess somebody up.’ He used another word besides ‘mess’ but the other suspects said, ‘That sounds like a good idea.’ They got into a vehicle and they went specifically looking for a bum, as they call it.’”
Not all skinheads are racists, and it’s unclear whether the men accused of attacking Johnson espoused white supremacist beliefs. WLWT, the NBC affiliate in Cincinnati, reported on its website that Hesson told investigators that “all four men had ties to possible white supremacist groups.”
On Feller’s publicly accessible MySpace page, which contains numerous links to skinhead-related music and video, he describes himself as “skinhead … enough said” and lists his occupation as “Army for now.” He was also wanted for misdemeanor assault, drunken driving and unauthorized license plate charges after he failed to show up for a July 2009 court date, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer.
Several states (though not Ohio) now protect homeless people under their hate crime laws. Following a Senate vote earlier this week, Florida is expected to become the third state to allow for enhanced penalties for crimes motivated by bias toward the homeless. In recent years, the state has seen a rash of assaults, some of them fatal, targeting those living on the streets. Florida follows Maryland, Washington, D.C., and (in a more limited way) Maine in extending hate crime protections to the homeless.
The Cincinnati incident isn’t the only criminal case in recent weeks possibly involving extremists in the military. Last month, an active-duty soldier was implicated in an alleged plot to sell firearms and grenades to a white supremacist group. William Bolton, 31, stationed in Virginia, was identified in a federal indictment as a member of the Connecticut White Wolves, a white supremacist group now known as Battalion 14. He was charged with conspiring to rob a firearms manufacturer and of illegally selling a firearm. Bolton, who pleaded not guilty to both charges at his arraignment on April 5, faces up to 30 years in prison. Four other (non-military) men were also charged in the seven-count indictment, which alleged that another member of the White Wolves made three explosive grenades that he packed in a cardboard box marked with a hand-printed swastika. The grenades were delivered to an unidentified witness, who made a cash payment to the group’s leader, 29-year-old Kenneth Zrallack of Ansonia, Conn. As Zrallack and the witness shared a drink, Zrallack’s girlfriend prompted them to call out “88” — neo-Nazi code for HH, or “Heil Hitler.”
That arrest bolsters the SPLC’s earlier findings that racial extremists are infiltrating the military and that service members are being recruited by hate groups. Since 2006, the Southern Poverty Law Center has provided the military with extensive information about white supremacist activity in its ranks. In November, the Pentagon tightened its ban on extremist activity; the revised policy not only prohibits active participation in supremacist groups, but also forbids advocacy of supremacist doctrine and causes.
White Supremacist Richard Barrett Murdered in Mississippi Home
01 year ago
Update: Police announced that they arrested Barrett’s neighbor late Thursday afternoon and charged him with murder in connection with Barrett’s slaying. Rankin County Sheriff Ronnie Pennington told The (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger that Vincent McGee, 22, had done yard work for Barrett. Barrett was stabbed to death and his body set on fire. Though McGee is black, police have not revealed whether Barrett’s racism played a role in the killing.
Richard Barrett, a longtime white supremacist leader who generated more publicity than influence, was found dead this morning in his Pearl, Miss., home, apparently the victim of a homicide.
Firefighters discovered his body in a bathroom after neighbors reported a fire at Barrett’s home around 8 a.m., according to news reports. Few details have been released about the incident, which is under investigation by local, state and federal authorities.
Though Barrett, a lawyer, never became a major leader in white supremacist circles, he drew substantial press attention by organizing rallies and filing free speech lawsuits. “He was known not only for being one of the hardest of the hard-core haters but a gadfly as well, because of his limited legal knowledge,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernandino. “And he was notorious for claiming legal victories, some of which he never actually won.”
Barrett led the Nationalist Movement, which advocated striking down civil rights laws, and organized white power rallies nationwide. Barrett’s “The Spirit of America Day,” which for 40 years honored high school student athletes, was recognized multiple times by Mississippi lawmakers, most recently in February.
Barrett, 67, had a long history of denigrating minorities, particularly blacks, immigrants and gays. Born in New York City, the Vietnam War veteran launched his efforts on behalf of white Christians when he moved to Mississippi in 1966, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). In his 1982 autobiography, The Commission, he called for resettling minorities groups to “Puerto Rico, Mexico, Israel, the Orient and Africa.” He also argued that “the Negro race … possess[es] no creativity of its own [and] pulls the vitality away from civilization.” And he favored sterilization and abortions of those deemed “unfit.”
During a failed 1984 run for U.S. Congress in which he faced three black candidates, he said voters had to decide between “the cotton boll and three lumps of coal.” (Barrett also ran repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, for governor of Mississippi.)
In 1988, he headed a protest against integration in predominantly white Forsyth County, Ga. Sixty-five mostly out-of-town activists took part, including 40 robed Klansmen. Barrett was among the protestors who signed “The Forsyth County Covenant,” which argued for the advancement of “America’s heritage as a free, white, Christian, English-speaking democracy” and asserted that “all efforts to make us a bilingual, bisexual or biracial society must be defeated.” That same year, he worked with two racist leaders of the National States Rights Party to organize a pro-white demonstration at the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta.
He also led rallies in Atlanta against the Martin Luther King Day holiday; in California (twice) in support of the Los Angeles Police Department officers acquitted of assaulting Rodney King; in Boston after a St. Patrick’s Day parade was cancelled when a court forbade the exclusion of gay groups; and in Morristown, N.J., to commemorate “Independence from Affirmative Action Day.” Each time only a handful of followers showed up, but the events attracted large crowds of counter-demonstrators and received considerable media attention. In 2003, he successfully sued York, Pa., after the city initially refused to give the Nationalist Movement a permit to hold a rally.
Barrett reached out to young skinheads in December 1988 when he hosted a weekend of paramilitary training in Learned, Miss., according to the ADL. The few teenagers who attended tried to hit a picture of Martin Luther King Jr. during target practice, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger reported. In recent years, Barrett ran an online forum for skinheads, despite criticizing the violence of certain extremists groups.
Barrett also campaigned on behalf of several 1960s-era murderers. After Byron de la Beckwith was convicted in 1994 of killing civil rights leader Medgar Evers, Barrett circulated a petition and led a march seeking a pardon from the Mississippi governor. (Another purpose of the march was to support a high school principal who lost his job after saying he would cancel the senior prom rather than allow interracial couples to attend.) In 2004, Barrett tried to sponsor a booth at the Mississippi State Fair backing Edgar Ray Killen, the former Klan leader who was found guilty of manslaughter in connection with the deaths of three civil rights workers. And in fall 2008, he planned a Louisville rally in support of James Forde Seale, who was convicted of facilitating the Klan murder of two black teenagers.
Barrett marched on Martin Luther King Day in January 2008 in Jena, La., to deride King and the six black teenagers subjected to harsh prosecutions for an attack on a white student. The marchers chanted slogans such as, “If it ain’t white, it ain’t right.”
Dobbs to Nativist Leader: ‘Dump the Hate’
01 year ago
by Sonia Scherr
in anti-immigrant
Talk radio host Lou Dobbs excoriated nativist leader William Gheen on air today for making comments about Sen. Lindsey Graham’s sexual orientation.
“I cannot even imagine why you would do such a thing,” Dobbs told Gheen, who appeared as a guest on Dobbs’ nationally syndicated show. Gheen, who heads Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC), had asserted in a South Carolina Tea Party speech and in a news release that Graham, a South Carolina Republican, should reveal that he’s homosexual. (Graham has previously denied rumors that he’s gay.) Dobbs called Gheen’s remarks “disgusting” and urged him to “dump the hate from your heart.”
“Bill, you’ve become someone I don’t recognize,” Dobbs said.
As he’s done before, Gheen insisted that Graham’s sexuality is relevant because the lawmaker could be working with Democrats on immigration reform to avoid being outed. “The lives, jobs, wages, health and security of Americans — the sovereignty of America we are trying to save — is more important than Lindsey Graham’s personal feelings,” he said. Gheen claimed that ALIPAC had received a “huge amount” of support for his statements and asked Dobbs how it feels to “be the Southern Poverty Law Center yourself.” The SPLC had been a frequent critic of the former CNN anchor, who demonized Latino immigrants night after night before he resigned from the network under pressure in November. After leaving CNN, Dobbs told Telemundo that “we need the ability to legalize illegal immigrants under certain conditions,” and he has appeared to reach out to the Latino community. The Telemundo interview prompted Gheen to apologize to his supporters “for being wrong about Dobbs.”
Gheen struggled during the 13-minute debate, flailing at Dobbs and frequently sounding flustered. At one point Gheen mispronounced the name of National Council of La Raza President Janet Murguia. When Dobbs corrected him, he accused the radio host of working with “the open borders lobby.” It wasn’t Gheen’s only blooper: Near the beginning of the show, he huffed that Dobbs had “come on this show all indignified.”
“It’s called indignant,” Dobbs replied.
Vicious Kansas Gay-Bashers Finally Find a Friend
01 year ago
by Sonia Scherr
in Anti-Gay
Westboro Baptist Church, a Kansas-based group notorious for turning tragedies into gay-bashing opportunities, is pretty much universally reviled. Even an Arizona-based Ku Klux Klan group forcefully (if ungrammatically) rejected the group in a “disclaimer” published on its website. “The Ku Klux Klan, LLC, has not or EVER will have ANY connection with The ‘Westboro Baptist Church,’” it said. “We absolutely repudiate their activities.”
Not the Dove World Outreach Center, a Gainesville, Fla., church that has used similar tactics to attack both gays and Muslims. “We support Westboro who [sic] came to Gainesville because of its ‘Gay’ reputation,” the church states on its website.
In fact, Dove became virtually the only group in the history of Westboro’s anti-gay and anti-Jewish campaigning to join forces with the Topeka, Kan., church. Dove enthusiastically took part in Westboro’s Sunday protest against Gainesville’s tolerance of homosexuality. About 30 members of Dove World Outreach Center joined fewer than 10 Westboro representatives outside Trinity United Methodist Church in Gainesville, according to the Gainesville Sun. Many of the Dove protesters wore their signature “Islam is of the Devil” T-shirts — a message they’ve also promoted on signs outside the church.
The Independent Florida Alligator, the University of Florida’s student newspaper, reported that Dove and Westboro members sang variations of “This Land is Your Land” (“This Land is Going Straight to Hell”), “I’m Proud to Be an American” (“I’m Ashamed to Be an American”) and “God Bless America” (“God Hates America”), among other tunes. “I think their church is willing to stand up for what the whole Bible says,” Dove pastor Wayne Sapp said in a video of the event shot by the Alligator. “Most churches like to preach part of the Bible. Westboro Baptist Church talks about these are things we need to turn away from: accepting homosexuality, accepting perversion, accepting adultery, accepting that that’s just how people are. That’s not the truth.”
But Dove, like Westboro, goes beyond asserting that the Bible condemns homosexuality. In March, it erected a sign outside the church that proclaimed “No Homo Mayor” — a reference to Gainesville City Commissioner Craig Lowe, who was running for mayor. (Lowe, now mayor-elect, spoke to dozens of people at a counter-protest in downtown Gainesville on Sunday.) The church later changed the sign to “No Homo” after Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, a Washington D.C.-based advocacy organization, complained to the Internal Revenue Service that Dove was violating the ban on political campaigning for tax-exempt groups.
For its part, Westboro — which has pilloried soldiers killed in Iraq, schoolchildren killed in bus crashes, Nobel Peace Prize laureates and others for supposedly tolerating homosexuality — is heading to Colorado tomorrow to continue its picketing. This time, presumably, it won’t have any help.
Nativist Leader Suspects GOP Senator Being Blackmailed By Dems
01 year ago
by Sonia Scherr
in anti-immigrant
Nativist leader William Gheen routinely demonizes undocumented immigrants, whom he portrays as violent, disease-ridden criminals.
Now he’s targeting Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), saying the longtime Washington politician should acknowledge that he’s gay. “The national border security organization known as Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC) [Gheen’s group] is officially calling for [Graham] to make his homosexual lifestyle public knowledge in the interest of political integrity and national security,” Gheen wrote in a news release today.
Graham, a 54-year-old bachelor, has previously denied rumors that he’s gay. Though it’s difficult to see how his sexual orientation relates to national border security, Gheen claims the link is perfectly clear: Graham could be collaborating with Democrats on immigration reform because they’re using his sexuality to blackmail him. “Graham is gay and while many people in South Carolina and Washington D.C. know that, the general public and Graham’s constituents do not,” he wrote. “I personally do not care about Graham’s private life, but in this situation his desire to keep this a secret may explain why he is doing a lot of political dirty work for others who have the power to reveal his secrets. Sen. Graham needs to come out of the closet inside that log cabin so that the public can rest assured he is not being manipulated with his secret.”
Gheen, 41, made similar statements on Saturday at a Tea Party protest in front of a cheering crowd in Greenville, S.C. “Sen. Graham, you need to come forward and tell people about your alternative lifestyle and your homosexuality,” he said. “I need to figure out why you’re trying to sell out your own countrymen and I need to make sure you being gay isn’t it.” For a while, the keyword tags to a video of his remarks on YouTube included “fag” and “queer”; Gheen denied using those words, saying they were the work of an unidentified hacker. They have since been removed.
Gheen’s comments about Graham’s sexuality have been covered heavily in the blogosphere. They’ve also led talk radio host Lou Dobbs to call for Gheen’s resignation on Twitter. Dobbs, formerly a darling of Gheen, lost favor last November after he told Telemundo interviewer Maria Celeste that “we need the ability to legalize illegal immigrants under certain conditions.” Gheen is scheduled to appear on Dobbs’ show tomorrow afternoon.
White Nationalist Website VDARE in Trouble, Loses Big Funder
01 year ago
The white nationalist website VDARE.com is in financial trouble — and its founder says that more mainstream anti-immigration groups may be responsible.
“If VDARE.com is to survive [the] latest threat, it must have your help now,” writes the website’s founder, Peter Brimelow, in a lengthy letter published on its homepage.
The latest threat, according to Brimelow, is that a big benefactor recently cut off funding for the website, which regularly publishes articles by white supremacists and anti-Semites. The “major foundation,” which Brimelow doesn’t name, helped finance the website since its inception in 1999. “ We’ve lost close to a third of our budget and we’ve been plunged into an immediate cash crisis,” writes Brimelow, a leading anti-immigration activist and author of the best-selling Alien Nation. “Of course, I’m still trying to find out what happened. One explanation I’ve been given is that the Washington D.C. ‘Beltway immigration reform groups’ lobbied against us, claiming that they would be tainted through guilt by association if our donor gave to us as well as them, because of our willingness to take risks and push the Political Correctness envelope.” (Brimelow doesn’t identify the “Beltway immigration reform groups,” but an April 7 VDARE.com column by Alexander Hart states that the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies and NumbersUSA are the “best-funded and most visible Beltway organizations in the patriotic immigration reform movement.” The SPLC identifies FAIR as a hate group because of its ties to white supremacists.)
Though Brimelow has denied that VDARE.com is white nationalist, his site features articles by extremists such as Jared Taylor, editor of the racist American Renaissance magazine; Kevin MacDonald, a psychology professor at the 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. Brimelow says he heard that the “Beltway immigration reform groups” especially objected to VDARE.com columnist and blogger Steve Sailer, who founded a neo-eugenics organization called the Human Biodiversity Institute. In a Feb. 7 column, Sailer wrote that murder “is for whites, and for anyone else who gets in the way of minorities that are clearly systematically prone to criminality.” He has repeatedly blamed the 2008 economic crash on a government push for minority home ownership. In a March 8 column complaining about Jewish support for immigration, he asserted that “American Jews should realize that, like the Protestant elite of yore, their privileged position as a de facto leadership caste bestows upon themselves corresponding duties to conserve the long-term well-being of the United States — rather than to indulge in personal and ethnic profit and power maximization.”
Brimelow, formerly a mainstream journalist at Forbes magazine and the National Review, explains that “supporting Steve is one of our main expenses” and laments that, “if VDARE.com fails, Steve Sailer will have no other outlets for his path-breaking work.” He also emphasizes the importance of paying VDARE.com’s other contributors, saying it’s critical to the website’s long-term health. Because operating expenses are low, he writes, “Essentially everything you give goes to pay writers and editors.”
Actually, quite a lot goes to paying Brimelow, who chairs the board of directors of the Connecticut-based VDARE Foundation, which manages the website. In 2007, Brimelow received $378,418, which accounted for nearly three-quarters of the foundation’s expenses. (Just $134,000 went toward paying freelance writers.) In 2006, Brimelow got $205,000; John Brimelow, Peter’s brother and fellow board member, was paid $45,020. That year, the compensation for both Brimelows amounted to more than half the foundation’s spending.
But VDARE.com wasn’t as personally lucrative for Brimelow in 2008, the last year for which tax forms are available. He received $115,000 — just over a quarter of the foundation’s spending for the year. Most of the remaining expenses consisted of fees paid to independent contractors.
Former Neo-Nazi Leader Sentenced to Prison for Threats
01 year ago
by Sonia Scherr
in Neo-Nazi
Former neo-Nazi leader Bill White will spend 2½ years in prison for threatening his perceived enemies.
U.S. District Judge James Turk sentenced White to 30 months on each of three counts, according to a federal court filing. The sentences will be served at the same time, with credit for time served. The judge also imposed three years of supervised release.
According to The Roanoke Times, Turk said he doesn’t often sentence defendants at the upper end of federal guidelines but thought White deserved the lengthier sentence for terrorizing some of his victims. The newspaper quoted Turk telling White that upon his release from prison, “You can have any thoughts you want to have, but you ought to keep them to yourself.”
On Dec. 18, after an eight-day federal trial in Roanoke, Va., the 32-year-old White was found guilty of making threats against a Citibank employee and a University of Delaware professor and of intimidating tenants of a Virginia Beach apartment complex. (The judge later dismissed a fourth conviction for threatening a Canadian human rights lawyer.) White targeted his victims through E-mail, his website, the telephone and the U.S. mail. On Monday, Turk denied White’s request for a new trial.
White, who did not speak during the hour-long sentencing hearing, was leader of the now-defunct American National Socialist Workers Party, a neo-Nazi organization that in 2008 had 35 chapters in 28 states. He had a long history of using the Internet for harassment. In 1996, while a student at the University of Maryland, he posted the phone number of a woman he believed was abusing her teenage daughter.
Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez said in a news release that the jury last winter rejected White’s contention that his speech was protected under the First Amendment. “[T]his sentence demonstrates that all threatening and intimidating behavior, no matter how a perpetrator tries to mask it, will be subject to the same punishment under the law,” he said.
White will likely serve the remainder of his sentence at a prison in Beckley, W.V. Even after he gets out of jail, it’s unlikely he will have a chance to vilify people on the Web. As part of his conditions of release, White will be barred from posting information online or using the Internet for a job or hobby.
Gay-Bashing Church Could Lose Tax Exemption
01 year ago
A Florida church known for its Muslim bashing is now taking aim at a gay mayoral candidate — and possibly endangering its tax exemption.
Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville has been attacking City Commissioner Craig Lowe, one of two candidates vying for mayor in an April 13 run-off election. The church erected a sign on its property last month that declared, “No Homo Mayor.” That was followed by a YouTube video in which Wayne Sapp, a pastor at the church, targets Lowe, whom he doesn’t identify by name. The video begins with Sapp proclaiming “No Homo Mayor” and asserting that Gainesville is the 11th gayest city in America. “We’re talking about the homos, the fags, the queers, and now we got one running for mayor of Gainesville, trying to convert Gainesville into Homoville,” he says. “We can’t have it.” In the video, Sapp complains that Dove World Outreach Center called more than 100 churches to ask that they join a protest against homosexuals running for office, but none would do so. Sapp lashes out at some ministers and churches by name and urges churchgoers to oust pastors who won’t take a stand. “Vote’em out of there,” he says. “They’re leading you to Hell, and you’re following.”
The video was removed from YouTube for violating its terms of use, according to the website of the Independent Florida Alligator, a student newspaper at the University of Florida, Gainesville, where the video can still be viewed. In a follow-up video posted on the church’s website, Sapp says that gays should not hold public office because they’re perverts. “Homosexuals are going to force themselves upon your children in schools,” he said. “You’re going to be forced to hire the homo to work for your church, to work in your office, to allow the devil himself to come into your office.” The anti-gay rants are somewhat new territory for Dove Outreach, which since last summer has been publicly defaming Muslims with its “Islam is of the Devil” signs and T-shirts.
Unlike its rhetoric attacking Muslims, the church’s latest campaign could lead to trouble with the Internal Revenue Service. In a March 19 story, The Gainesville Sun reported that the “No Homo Mayor” sign likely contravened the law banning tax-exempt organizations from advocating for or against political candidates. A week later, the Rev. Barry Lynn, director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, wrote a letter to the IRS asking the agency to investigate the church and ensure the law is enforced. “This is an open and shut case,” said Lynn in a statement. “The church freely admits that it intended to intervene in the election in violation of federal tax law.”
Eric Smith, a spokesman for the IRS, told Hatewatch that the agency is prohibited by law from commenting on investigations, though changes in the status of tax-exempt organizations are reported in a weekly IRS bulletin. It’s relatively uncommon for an organization’s tax-exempt status to be revoked, and the process often takes months or years. (Meanwhile, county officials are conducting an unrelated investigation into whether the church’s for-profit furniture business nullifies its local tax exemption. Sheila Crapo, who works in the Alachua County Property Appraiser’s Office, said she had met with church officials and that the property appraiser would make a decision before June, when the county sends out any denials for exemptions. The church property is assessed at $1.65 million, according to county records.)
The Rev. Terry Jones, who heads the Dove World Outreach Center, told The Gainesville Sun that the church was merely exercising its First Amendment Right to free speech when it put up the sign. “We are within our constitutional rights,” he said.
Not so, say tax law experts. Both Robert Atkinson, a professor at Florida State University College of Law, and Laura Chisolm, a professor at Case Western Reserve University Law School, told Hatewatch that the church’s “No Homo Mayor” message appears to violate the prohibition on tax-exempt organizations taking part in political campaigns. However, the law often isn’t enforced for “de minimus” (small) infractions; Atkinson noted that leaders of large churches routinely tell members to vote against candidates who support abortion rights and that Catholic clergy have tried to deny religious rites to such candidates.
But Chisolm felt the IRS might act in this case. “When the activity is as ‘in your face’ as this, I suspect the IRS might not ignore it, although they may try just to get a promise to quit it and not do it again,” she wrote in an E-mail. “The first amendment free speech argument has been tried before, and hasn’t worked. Although the government cannot prohibit anyone from speaking, the courts, including the Supreme Court, have held that the government can condition the privilege of tax exemption on forgoing certain kinds of speech, as long as there are alternative avenues for the speech.”
Dove Outreach has since retreated somewhat. The Gainesville Sun reported this week that the church changed its sign from “No Homo Mayor” to “No Homo.” (However, a video remains posted on the church’s website in which Sapp says that Gainesville can’t afford a gay mayor.) Americans United responded that the church’s action came too late and that the IRS should still revoke its tax exemption.
Regardless of the IRS’s decision, the church seems to be on theologically shaky ground. “It’s ironic that a church would be doing this,” Atkinson said. “I think they would find themselves constrained not by the laws of the state but by the principles of Christianity that forbid hate generally.”