Groups of heavily armed white men descend upon various state capitols to protest against the coronavirus lockdown. I some cases they try to force their way into legislative chambers and what was the response of the police? They just stood there and let it all happen. George Floyd is accused of writing a bad check and he dies in police custody. Remember he never resisted. Brennan Taylor was asleep in her apartment when the Louisville police broke down the door to her apartment to serve an arrest warrant for a crime she was never involved and was shot 8 times by the police because her boy friend believed they were the victims of a home invasion and shot once at what he thought were the perpetrators. Breonna died. They are just the latest African Americans to either be killed or physically assaulted by the police for the crime of simply being black. To believe that there isn't systemic racism in the security services is just being willfully naive.
Robert O'Brien Donald Trump's National Security Adviser made the ridiculously stupid statement of the title while speaking with CNN's Jake Tapper.
"No, I don't think there's systemic racism. I think 99.9% of our law enforcement officers are great Americans. Many of them are African American, Hispanic, Asian, they're working the toughest neighborhood, they've got the hardest jobs to do in this country and I think they're amazing, great Americans," O'Brien told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union" when asked if systemic racism was a problem for police agencies. If that were true African Americans wouldn't live in fear of the police simply because they are black. Instead they have to be constantly vigilant where they police are concerned. As they know that any action could lead to physical harm.
The protests that have spread across the nation in the wake of the murder of George Floyd have attracted a diverse group of supporters that go beyond local Black communities and national organizations. At events in Washington, New York, Minneapolis, and elsewhere, community activists have been joined by allies, by groups supporting Latinos, Indian groups, and even groups of Mennonite farmers speaking out in support and showing up for protests.
But, with dozens of buildings burned and Donald Trump preparing to bring in the military, there’s a growing sense that the violence in many cases isn’t originating from within the local Black community. In multiple instances, there have been incidents that seemed to spring up on the periphery of peaceful protests, leading to violent confrontations and property destruction. And increasingly, there are reports that these events are not originating organically from the protests or from confrontations between protesters and the police. There is a very real feeling that white supremacists are using this moment to create incidents designed to justify still more violence and suppression.
With dozens of protests across the nation, not every event is the same. For example, it’s not hard to see what sparked this incident Atlanta, where a police officer slams a bicycle into a Black woman for having the audacity to wave a finger at him while saying “Don’t touch me.” It’s clear that the violence in this particular moment originated direct from the police.
But in some of the most publicized incidents across the nation, there seem to be a singular nature to some of those involved, as in this recording in which what appears to be a young white man in camo pants and military boots paints graffiti on a federal building.
Question: What's the best way to focus the spot light on your utter incompetence?
Answer: If you're Donald Trump you call former President Obama incompetent.
Question: Does magic really exist? Answer: Apparently it does according to Eric Trump. (Is he Uday or Qusay?) His intellect snatched from a Box of Cracker Jacks announced on Fox News that the coronavirus would magically disappear by summer.
Question: Busy politicians should engage in what activity during parliamentary debate?
Answer: Watch crocodile videos in the Japanese Diet.
Question: Is Donald Trump the racist white nationalist that he claims no to be?
Answer: Yes, as only a racist white nationalist would retweet the tweet of a racist white nationalist.
Question: How do you cause rightwing heads to explode? Answer: Invite Greta Thunberg to participate on a discussion of the coronavirus. After all those her age might actually listen to the advise of experts on the panel.
Yes. I know you're nor surprised given from the start of his political carrier Donald Trump has lived off of racist tropes. Look at who some of his advisers were: Steve Bannona known white nationalist who once ran Breitbart. One of the books that has informed his opinions is Camp Of The Saints a racist nationalist book published in France in the early 1970's.
Sebastian Gorka another former Trump adviser who virulently anti-immigrant. Gorka has ties to Hungarian group which has ties to the Nazis of World War II and Neo-Nazi groups in Europe and America. Sebastian Gorka is a religious bigot with his continued and founded attacks on Islam and Muslims.
Sebastian Gorka and Steve Bannon have left the White House Stephen Miller an anti immigrant adviser remains as can be seen in the immigration policies enacted by the Trump administration. The travel ban, increased immigration enforcement and the child separation policies implemented at the U.S. southern border.
These actions have given white nationalists the green light to promote their hatred and bigotry.
Southern Poverty Law Center warns of growing movement driven by ‘fear of demographic change’
White nationalist hate groups in the US have increased 55% throughout the Trump era, according to a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), and a “surging” racist movement continues to be driven by “a deep fear of demographic change”.
Nationally, there were 155 such groups counted last year, and they were present in most states. These groups were counted separately from Ku Klux Klan groups, racist skinheads, Christian Identity groups, and neo-Confederate groups, all of which also express some version of white supremacist beliefs.
Since the turn of the millennium, the report says, “American racists have fretted over what they fear will be the loss of their place of dominance in society” as its racial composition changes.
The report notes that the perpetrator of a massacre on 3 August 2019 in El Paso, Texas, where 26 were killed, and another man who attacked a synagogue in Poway, California, killing one woman and wounding three more, claimed to be motivated by the idea that white people were being replaced.
The inevitable next step is apparently here: American intelligence officials, according to The New York Times, now believe that neo-Nazi paramilitary operations such as The Base and its Northwest-based training operations, used to plan and train for terrorist acts in the United States, including possibly during the coming election season, are being underwritten and overseen by Russian intelligence services.
The Times’ report cites seven unnamed intelligence officials who briefed the paper’s reporters on Russia’s updated tactics in interfering with the 2020 election. One of the new tactics appears to involve activating neo-Nazi terrorists, radicalized online and organized through the internet.
The FBI is currently investigating Russian intelligence ties to The Base, which began operating a paramilitary training camp in eastern Washington state last year. Several members of The Base were arrested in January just prior to a planned right-wing gun rally in Richmond, Virginia, where they reportedly intended to wreak violent havoc.
The Guardianrevealed in January that the founder of The Base was a man named Rinaldo Nazzaro, originally from New Jersey, who now makes his home in Russia and appears to have at least peripheral connections to Russian intelligence. From there, he’s been able to organize The Base under the nom de plume “Norman Spear,” though he has apparently made several trips to the U.S. to secure the rural Washington property.
From a foreign-intelligence perspective, these kinds of operations are primarily intended to sow chaos and fear—to which a common human response is to embrace authoritarianism and its surety. Such responses become acute in the event of real terrorist violence.
“One of Russia’s goals is weakening institutions and the weaponization of race is a way they can do that,” Laura Rosenberger, the director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, told the Times. “A divided America is a weaker America. When we are unable to solve our challenges together, Russia is more able to flex its power around the world.”
Russian intelligence operatives have been forced to adapt their tactics because social media companies are now on the lookout for the ad-fueled disinformation efforts that cropped up in 2016, according to the report. Instead, they’re now manipulating spaces that are more difficult to monitor and to mask their operations, including message boards like 4chan, private Facebook groups, and closed chat rooms.
The story cites FBI agent David Porter’s remarks at a recent election security conference: “We see Russia is willing to conduct more brazen and disruptive influence operations because of how it perceives its conflict with the West … To put it simply, in this space, Russia wants to watch us tear ourselves apart.”
On August 12, the small, serene city of Charlottesville, Virginia will mark the anniversary of a deadly white nationalist rally that shocked the nation.
Here, in their own words, some of those closest to the events of that weekend tell the story of what happened, why it happened, and what it meant to a city and a nation.You may find some language offensive.
PROLOGUE: 'WE KNEW WE WERE IN FOR A BAD DAY'
Ryan Kelly, photographer, Charlottesville Daily Progress It's important to understand that this didn't happen in a vacuum, it didn't just pop up and surprise everybody. It felt over the course of the summer that things were building up in Charlottesville.
Brennan Gilmore, Charlottesville resident People hadn't quite understood the level of violence or hatred or the numbers of people coming to town, but the town was very much aware. It was like a hurricane was coming.
Jalane Schmidt, University of Virginia professor, Black Lives Matter activist The propaganda that the alt-right had put out was martial in its imagery. It was a march on Charlottesville. It was very militaristic. We felt like we were going to be under siege.
Dr Michael Williams, surgeon, UVA hospital We got a plan in place in anticipation, but I got a fair amount of push-back from my colleagues in surgery. They said "This is going to be a big nothing."
Seth Wispelwey, local reverend It felt to me like a profound test. But there was no question about where I belonged and what I wanted to do.
Brenda Brown-Grooms, local reverend We'd been monitoring the social media posts of the alt-right and they were detailing their hopes for the weekend, hopes for inciting a race war in the country, so we knew it was going to be dire.
Jalane Schmidt The crazy thing is we tried to warn the city. We had infiltrated chat rooms, taken screenshots. We made six dossiers, presented them to police, the city council, anyone who would listen. We said, "This is not a First Amendment rally. They are literally coming to kill us."
Emily Gorcenski, student activist There were explicit calls for violence there. We presented them to the city in the hope they would shut the rally down before it began.
Rev Brenda Brown-Grooms The information we gave them fell on deaf ears.
Emily Gorcenski When that failed, we knew we were in for a bad day.
'NAZIS STARTED COMING OUT OF THE WOODWORK'
How it began - Other cities in America contended with their Confederate monuments and the legacy of slavery, but it would be Charlottesville, near the former capital of the Confederacy, that would bear the brunt of the controversy.
Jalane Schmidt In 2016 a young teenage activist here in Charlottesville started a petition to remove the Confederate monuments. At the same time, we had the Republican primary campaign heating up with Trump winning more and more states. Local white supremacists got upset about the efforts to remove the statues and they were fuelled by the feedback nationally, saying "This is OK, it's open season to be racist."
Zyahna Bryant, teenage activist I had to write a school paper about something I could change and I had been thinking about public spaces in Charlottesville. I thought it was important to draw attention to how Confederate imagery is violent and what it represents for people of colour. Eventually I turned my paper into a petition.
Wes Bellamy, Charlottesville councillor and former deputy mayor When I first started talking about moving the statues, people were livid, they hated hearing about it. I started getting racist abuse - "We're going to get you nigger," that kind of thing.
Zyahna Bryant For me, it's hard because there are no statues in Charlottesville that depict African-American heroes. And so for that reason alone, black people have nothing to look up to in our public spaces. We are not represented.
Jalane Schmidt Those statues were put up in the 1920s in order to edify the white public and they are still there for the edification of white people. And now people are shifting the reason. Now it's because they don't want to forget history?
Charles Weber, Charlottesville lawyer fightingthe removal of thestatuesOur view was that the city didn't have the authority to do what they proposed to do. Aside from being magnificent works of art and places of beauty for the city, the statues are a memorial to war veterans. It's not in America's DNA to deny its own history.
Jalane Schmidt On 29 January 2017, the mayor called a press conference in front of the city hall. And he announced that Charlottesville was now the capital of the resistance. People cheered. That resonated with a lot of people, but it put a target on our backs.
Wes Bellamy The Nazis and Confederates started coming out of the woodwork. Then Jason Kessler came to light.
Jason Kessler, organiser, Unite the Right rally I wasn't really involved in local politics, I didn't find Charlottesville politics or any other politics very interesting. Then I was doing yard work one day for a friend and he happened to bring up the Robert E Lee statue and how the city was trying to tear it down. I thought it was symbolic of a lot of things happening in society.
Claire Gastañaga, executive director, ACLU Virginia Jason Kessler applied for a permit for a rally at Emancipation Park, some time last spring. The way the Charlottesville process works, a permit is granted automatically if there's no negative decision in 10 days.
Jason Kessler Shoot, the moment I put in the application didn't feel that eventful. After 10 days it was approved and I set about calling different people in the alternative media, on the internet. Some describe them as alt-right, some as alt-light.
Charles Weber Jason Kessler and Richard Spencer, both University of Virginia graduates, saw the argument over the statues as a way to promote their own cause. We were horrified by that.
Nikuyah Walker, counter-protester, now Charlottesville mayor People like Kessler and Spencer started to get a little leery of whether white supremacy would be maintained. That's what this was about: "How dare you, a primarily white council, vote to take down our statues?"
Jason Kessler Richard Spencer is a white nationalist. Personally I don't call myself a white nationalist. I consider myself a civil and human rights advocate, focused on the caucasian demographic.
Isaac Smith, former ally of Jason Kessler Kessler's idea was to try to unite the alt-right with the mainstream right, and get regular Republicans to show up.
Jason Kessler The moderate speakers did not want to be on the same stage as Richard Spencer, so it ended up being much more far right than I intended it to be.
Claire Gastañaga, executive director, ACLU Virginia People had been calling all that week for Kessler's permit to be revoked. After a series of closed meetings, Charlottesville council sent him a letter saying it was revoked but they would consider reissuing it if he moved the rally to a different location. He tweeted us at about 2am on the Tuesday before the weekend, asking if we would be interested in giving him legal assistance. There was nothing about his political positions that we agreed with, but there are rules and governments have to follow those rules. We filed a complaint on Thursday and the judge held a hearing on the Friday night, about 9pm, and ruled that the decision to revoke Kessler's permit was an unconstitutional decision based on the content of his speech. So the permit was reissued.
Walt Heinecke, University of Virginia professorWe decided to apply for permits for counter-protests. I teach a class in citizenship so I thought it was time for me to put my money where my mouth was. We are in a battle for the soul of America at this point, and I thought it was time for people to step up.
Robert Rundo, a leader of the violent white supremacist group known as the Rise Above Movement, pounded the man, hitting him with a series of thudding punches — left, right, left Before traveling to Ukraine, Rundo and another RAM member, Robert Smithson, visited the German town of Ostritz to compete in a mixed martial tournament at the Shield and Sword festival, a white power convergence held on Hitler’s birthday. Attracting roughly 1,000 fascists from across the continent, the gathering was arranged by Germany’s National Democratic Party, the closest thing the country has to an openly Nazi political party. The mixed martial arts tournament held that weekend, Kampf der Nibelungen, is the largest white power combat sports event in Europe, according to researchers monitoring European extremists.— that sent his foe staggering backwards.
But this wasn’t a street brawl captured on video: It was a boxing match — complete with 12-ounce gloves, a referee, and scantily attired ring girls — and it was promoted by a white supremacist fight club in Ukraine. The event was held inside a bunker-like building in Kiev, with fighters competing inside a cage of the sort familiar to mixed martial arts fans in America.
With the skinhead subculture fading, neo-Nazi organizers in Europe have turned to promoting boxing and mixed martial arts bouts with the aim of pulling in new recruits.
Rundo’s fight in Ukraine occurred this spring, as he and two other RAM members toured Europe. In Kiev, Rundo and other RAM members hung out with Denis Nikitin, a burly Russian soccer hooligan who has become one of the most successful fight promoters in ultra-nationalist circles.
On social media the group posted video and photos from the event, which was held in May. Based in Southern California, RAM’s members were involved in political violence last year in Charlottesville and other American cities. The group says it wants to revive the “warrior spirit” of the white male, and its videos of fight-training, weight-lifting and street melees have proven popular on social media.
Observers of the far-right in Europe are concerned about the infiltration of neo-Nazis into the boxing and MMA scenes — and they’re particularly worried about Nikitin.
“He is seen as dangerous by those who monitor the far right” due to his “outright neo-Nazi ideology — preaching racial war and the need to ‘reconquer’ the ‘living space’ of the white man in Europe,” said Pavel Klymenko, a Ukrainian researcher with the FARE Network who tracks soccer hooligans.
According to Klymenko, Nikitin has taught knife-fighting techniques and hand-to-hand combat skills to extremist groups in Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom. In recent years he has launched a successful streetwear company called White Rex — one T-shirt design features an iron cross, an emblem used by the Nazis, and the words “YOU MUST MURDER,” while another depicts the logo of the Spanish fascist party, or Falange.
Nikitin has repackaged older white supremacist ideas for a new generation, rebranding them as “nationalist concepts,” said Karim Zidan, an independent journalist who writes on the intersection of sports and politics. “Nikitin is a massive figure in both MMA and football hooliganism. In a way, he’s weaponized both sports for his cause,” Zidan told ProPublica and Frontline.
At the Southern Poverty Law Center, Keegan Hankes, an analyst who follows RAM, said the group’s trip to Europe “signals that they aren’t just hobbyists. It’s gives them credibility” within the U.S. white power movement.
Social media postings show Rundo acquired several new tattoos on RAM’s European excursion, including an “8” on each shoulder (88 is the white supremacist code for “Heil Hitler”) and the White Rex logo (a Viking warrior) on his right shin with the word “fanatic” emblazoned below.
RAM has also begun importing White Rex T-shirts and selling its own garments as a means of funding the group. The Southern California organization operates an online store, Right Brand Clothing, which carries items from Nikitin’s clothing line as well as other brands like Svastone.
Nikitin refused to comment when contacted by ProPublica and Frontline, saying via email, “There will be no contact or information exchange with you. Just sit quietly and see us rise.”
Americans from many backgrounds call Los Angeles home. It is this diverse social fabric that makes the city unique. Nevertheless, this is probably not the city where many would expect to find the residence of a prominent white supremacist. Yet this is where, deep in the heart of downtown Los Angeles, the law office of William Johnson, leader of the far-right American Freedom Party is located.
Johnson prefers to be called a "white nationalist" rather than a "white supremacist", and wants white people to separate from other Americans of "non-European" heritage. In the 1980s, he even proposed legislation to revoke the citizenship of non-white Americans.
