Tag: white nationalism

Federal judges received a link to an anti-Semitic blog post. It came from the Justice Department.

Washington Post logoThe morning briefings come nearly every workday, seemingly chock-full of all the news fit to be seen by employees at the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which handles the country’s immigration cases. Regularly topping two dozen pages, the memos include summaries of articles from outlets national and local, covering topics like “Legal News,” “Enforcement News” and “Police and Legislative News.”

But on Monday, tucked between stories from The Washington Post and a public radio station, the briefing included a summary of and a link to a blog post from what the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated a “Hate Group”: Vdare.com, a frequent platform for white nationalists espousing anti-Semitic and anti-immigration rhetoric.

The Vdare post singles out immigration judges by name, uses their photos and refers to them with an anti-Semitic slur. The Justice Department sends the briefings to all EOIR employees, including its 400-some immigration judges, which means the judges named and pictured in the derogatory post also received the link to it this week — from their employer.

View the complete August 23 article by Reis Thebault on The Washington Post website here.

Democrats call for Pelosi to cut recess short to address white nationalism

The Hill logoDozens of House Democrats are pressing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to cut short the long summer break and bring House committees back to Washington to address the violent rise of white nationalism.

Behind two freshman lawmakers — Reps. Veronica Escobar (Texas) and Tom Malinowski (N.J.) — the Democrats maintain that “urgent attention” is needed to tackle “the threats posed by white supremacist terrorism” after Saturday’s deadly mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, where the suspect appeared to be driven by anti-immigrant sentiment.

The pair is circulating a letter among House Democrats urging Pelosi to call back the relevant panels to take up related legislation.

View the complete August 6 article by Mike Lillis on The Hill website here.

How the Republicans went all in on white nationalism and voter suppression — and even worse may be yet to come

Every time I go back and read my December 2015 piece on Donald Trump and the missing white voters of the 2012 election, I get a sick feeling in my stomach. I had identified exactly how the Republicans could win the 2016 election, but I just couldn’t bring myself to believe they would pull it off. In truth, that piece should be bracketed by two other pieces of analysis I did on this subject. The earliest came in July 2013 when I wrote about the Republicans’ decision to drop “the idea that they need to do better with Latinos and adopt the idea that they need to do even better with white voters.” The latter one was written a few days after Donald Trump was elected president. I called it “Avoiding the Southification of the North.”

All three articles talk about the future of the Republican Party in the context of their demographic challenges. As the country becomes more ethnically, racially, and religiously diverse, the GOP loses market share. The same happens as young people replace old people in the electorate. The Republicans could respond by abandoning some conservative principles. But they would rather try every other option first. One strategy is to use their power to shift the electorate in their favor. By making it harder for young people to vote and by using every available tool to discourage minority voting, they hope to win a few more elections before they have to actually appeal to these voters. Another strategy is to get white people to think as white people. Here is how I described this in my 2013 piece:

Accusing the Democrats of socialism, which is a race-neutral way of accusing the party of being beholden to the racial underclasses, has been proven insufficient. The only hope for a racial-polarization strategy is to get the races to segregate their votes much more thoroughly, and that requires that more and more whites come to conclude that the Democratic Party is the party for blacks, Asians, and Latinos.

View the complete May 17 article by Martin Longman from the Washington Monthly on the AlterNet website here.

White House declines to back Christchurch call to stamp out online extremism amid free speech concerns

The United States broke with 18 governments and five top American tech firms Wednesday by declining to endorse a New Zealand-led effort to curb extremism online, a response to the live-streamed shootings at two Christchurch mosques that killed 51.

White House officials said free-speech concerns prevented them from formally signing onto the largest campaign to date targeting extremism online. But it was another example of the United States standing at odds to some its closest allies.

Leaders from around the globe, including British Prime Minister Theresa May, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Jordan’s King Abdullah II, signed the “Christchurch Call,” which was unveiled at a gathering in Paris that had been organized by French President Emmanuel Macron and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter also signed on to the document, pledging to work more closely with one another and governments to make certain their sites do not become conduits for terrorism. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was among the attendees at the conference.

View the complete May 15 article by Tony Romm and Drew Harwell on The Washington Post website here.

When Will The Republican Party Push Back Against White Nationalism?

Two horrific acts of terrorism were committed this weekend against non-Christians. One by an Islamophobic Christian supremacist terrorist mistakenly targeting Sikhs (again), and one by an anti-Semitic white supremacist terrorist spouting “replacement theory” smears.

In the first case, a man whose father was a pastor and who was suffering mental illness in part due to service in Iraq, drove into a family of Sikhs in Sunnyvale, California, allegedly believing they were Muslims. A 13-year-old girl is now in a coma and fighting for her life. The terrorist was allegedly on his way to a Bible study group and praising Jesus when authorities caught him.

In the second, a white supremacist took credit for an arsonist attack against a mosque last month, only after gunning down several people at a synagogue in Poway, California, killing one and injuring three.

View the complete April 28 article by David Atkins with The Washington Monthly on the National Memo website here.

Here are 21 facts that explain who Trump ‘puppet master’ Stephen Miller really is

The anti-immigrant Trump mouthpiece has been like this for a long time.

This story first ran in 2017.

Even among the right-wing ideologues doing the actual presidenting in this administration, Stephen Miller stands out for the copious amounts of Kool-Aid he mainlines. Speaking to the New York Times, a Trump team colleague described Miller as “fiercely loyal” to the president, “a true believer in every sense of the word.” Though he joined the campaign in its early days, penning many of the apocalyptic speeches that won fear-drunk Republican hearts and minds, Miller recently got a lot more visibility after a string of television appearances in defense of the Muslim ban. At each stop, Miller showed a flair for the dramatic: he lied, he dodged, he put on his best tyrant’s voice and proclaimed the executive branch above the law. It seemed contrived and forced, like a politically precocious, weasley teenager’s idea of how to command a crowd. According to those who know Miller’s history, that’s not so far off the mark.

Dating back to junior high school, Miller has been the unwavering right-winger now before us. Though the internet, and some of his family members, were quick to compare him to Joseph Goebbels, this reporter saw a resemblance to Roy Cohn—a Trump mentor—down to the sartorial details. Miller wears retro skinny suits, only recently ditched a chain-smoking habit and has the kind of cockiness that reads as unexamined, unsympathetic self-hatred. His barked orders and put-on baritone are all part of the package, and can strike an observer as funny. At least until you remember this guy is trying to turn the country into an all-white gated community. Continue reading “Here are 21 facts that explain who Trump ‘puppet master’ Stephen Miller really is”

‘Use That Word!’: Trump Embraces the ‘Nationalist’ Label

WASHINGTON — As a general rule, presidents do not refer to themselves as a “nationalist” given the freighted history of the word. But as President Trump tries to galvanize his conservative base to turn out in the midterm elections, he has adopted the label as a badge of honor.

At a rally in Houston on Monday night, he embraced the term as unabashedly as he ever has. “Really, we’re not supposed to use that word,” he told supporters in a nod to the usual political sensibilities that he relishes disrupting. “You know what I am? I’m a nationalist, O.K.? I’m a nationalist. Nationalist! Use that word! Use that word!”

Asked in the Oval Office on Tuesday why he used that word given its association with racist movements, Mr. Trump professed ignorance of its history but did not back off. “I never heard that theory about being a nationalist,” he said. “I’ve heard them all. But I’m somebody who loves our country.” Undaunted, he added: “I am a nationalist. It’s a word that hasn’t been used too much. Some people use it, but I’m very proud. I think it should be brought back.”

View the complete October 23 article by Peter Baker on the New York Times website here.

Trump speechwriter fired amid scrutiny of appearance with white nation

The following article by Robert Costa was posted on the Washington Post website August 19, 2018:

Credit: Brendan Smialowski,i AFP, Getty Images

A White House speechwriter for President Trump was terminated last week after revelations that he had spoken at a conference attended by well-known white nationalists, according to three people familiar with the decision who were not authorized to speak publicly.

Darren Beattie, who was a visiting instructor at Duke University before he joined the White House speechwriting team, was fired Friday after a media inquiry about his appearance at the 2016 H.L. Mencken Club conference, where Beattie spoke on a panel alongside Peter Brimelow.

Brimelow, founder of the anti-immigrant website Vdare.com, is a “white nationalist” and “regularly publishes works by white supremacists, anti-Semites, and others on the radical right,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an advocacy group that tracks extremists.

View the complete article here.

Will the Alt Right Produce the Next Timothy McVeigh?

The following article by  Alex Reid Ross and Shane Burley was posted on the AlterNet website November 27, 2017:

The history of white nationalism suggests we could be entering a period of violent upheaval.

Timothy McVeigh, Credit: AP

Last weekend, the Rocklands Farm in Poolesville, Maryland gave the boot to Richard Spencer and his white nationalist think tank, the National Policy Institute, midway through their scheduled conference. “Throughout our history of hosting private events, we have never had to ask a group to leave,” the owners’ statement read. “However, yesterday, November 19, we discovered that a private event held here was, in reality, a gathering of an organization that is strongly in opposition to our values.”

For the self-proclaimed founder of the so-called alt right, it was merely the latest in a series of humiliations. Continue reading “Will the Alt Right Produce the Next Timothy McVeigh?”