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Not One Single Republican Votes for Probe of Neo-Nazis in US Military and Police
Zero House Republicans supported a measure requiring the Pentagon and federal law enforcement agencies to publish a report on countering white supremacist and neo-Nazi activity in their ranks.
Jul 14, 2022
Zero House Republicans on Wednesday supported a measure requiring the Pentagon and federal law enforcement agencies to publish a report on countering white supremacist and neo-Nazi activity in their ranks.
Rep. Brad Schneider's (D-Ill.) amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2023 directing the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of Defense "to publish a report that analyzes and sets out strategies to combat white supremacist and neo-Nazi activity in the uniformed services and federal law enforcement agencies" passed in a party-line 218-208 vote.
Among present lawmakers, Democrats were unified in support and Republicans in opposition. Reps. Theodore Deutch (D-Fla.), Kevin Brady (R-Texas), Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) did not vote.
The House is expected to pass the full NDAA this week, after which it will conference with the Senate, where amendments to the annual military spending bill could be struck down.
Schneider's proposal requests "figures on the number of people who were discharged from uniformed services or law enforcement because of situations involving white supremacy and neo-Nazi activity," The Hill reported. It also calls for "information on how the agency leaders responded to 'planned or effectuated incidents' connected to white supremacist and neo-Nazi ideology."
The report--to be published no more than 180 days after enactment of the NDAA and every six months thereafter--would be submitted to congressional committees, and unclassified sections would be made public.
In a House floor speech on Wednesday, Schneider said that the U.S. is experiencing a rise in domestic terrorism, pointing to the 2018 mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh by a right-wing, anti-Semitic gunman, and the 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, where Heather Heyer was killed when a neo-Nazi drove his car into a crowd of progressive counter-protesters.
In a 2020 report titled Hidden in Plain Sight: Racism, White Supremacy, and Far-Right Militancy in Law Enforcement, the Brennan Center for Justice wrote that "the government's response to known connections of law enforcement officers to violent racist and militant groups has been strikingly insufficient."
Last year, a House Committee on Veterans' Affairs hearing on "Violent Domestic Extremist Groups and the Recruitment of Veterans" highlighted the dangers of far-right extremism among veterans and active-duty military personnel.
According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the percentage of all domestic terrorist incidents linked to active-duty military personnel and reservists increased in 2020 to 6.4%, up from 1.5% in 2019 and 0% in 2018.
Schneider cited a May presentation from the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, titled "The Insider Threat and Extremist Activity Within the DOD," which detailed cases of domestic terrorism connected to members of the U.S. military.
"Such behavior, such extremism is a threat to us in all segments of society," Schneider said during debate. "There is no reason to believe that our military is any different."
"These are exceptions, they are rare," he added, "but we must do everything we can to identify them and to thwart them before risks become a reality."
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Rights Groups Fight Back Against 'Punitive and Unjust' Anti-Protest Law in Florida
"H.B. 1 is undemocratic legislation that has stifled our constitutional rights by obstructing the activity of Black community organizers. H.B.1 must be repealed, abolished, or simply outlawed."
Jul 14, 2021
A coalition of civil rights groups on Wednesday filed a motion in a Florida federal court seeking to block the state's recently enacted anti-protest law--which critics say targets racial justice demonstrators while letting right-wing protesters off the hook.
"We use protest as a vehicle for change and not only does this law silence our voices, but it puts our lives in danger."
--Nailah Summers, Dream Defenders
The ACLU of Florida, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), and Community Justice Project (CJP), with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP serving as counsel, filed a motion for preliminary injunction (pdf) in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida in a bid to block parts of H.B. 1, the so-called "anti-riot" bill introduced in the wake of last year's Black Lives Matter protests and signed into law by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in April.
The injunction was filed on behalf of Dream Defenders, the Black Collective, Chainless Change, Black Lives Matter Alliance of Broward, the Florida State Conference of the NAACP, and the Northside Coalition of Jacksonville.
"Among other things, the law risks criminalizing peaceful protest, shields those who injure or kill protestors (for example by ramming their vehicles into protestors) from civil penalties, discourages people from protesting, and otherwise infringes on First Amendment rights," the organizations filing the motion said in a statement. "The law was passed as a direct response to racial justice protests in 2020, and appears designed to target those who protest against police violence."
Critics argued that H.B. 1's civil legal immunity provision endangers lives and would have protected the neo-Nazi who murdered anti-racism protester Heather Heyer with his car in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017.
H.B. 1 is but one of scores of Republican-sponsored anti-protest bills introduced in dozens of states over the past year. As of late June, eight states have passed such laws.
The same groups that filed Wednesday's motion also sued DeSantis and other state officials in May over H.B. 1.
"This law has changed the landscape for what it means to organize and create safer conditions for our communities in Florida," said Nailah Summers, co-executive director of Dream Defenders, in a statement. "Protest has always been a vital tool for accountability for our public officials. We use protest as a vehicle for change and not only does this law silence our voices, but it puts our lives in danger."
"H.B. 1 is a punitive and unjust law created to silence communities, but protect vigilantes."
--Krystina Francois, The Black Collective
Krystina Francois, co-founder and board member of the Black Collective, said that "H.B. 1 is a punitive and unjust law created to silence communities, but protect vigilantes."
"Black Floridians deserve more than a law that continues to suppress their voices," asserted Francois. "Our constitutional right to assemble peacefully and demand justice from a society that would rather criminalize us than uplift our quality of life is necessary."
Ben Frazier, president of the Northside Coalition of Jacksonville, said that "H.B. 1 targets Black organizers, and their allies who stood up courageously to say 'Black Lives Matter!'"
"We protested against police brutality and against social, racial, and economic injustice," Frazier continued. "The enactment of H.B. 1 has frightened peaceful protesters from exercising their constitutional right to assemble and protest. Many of our supporters have declined to participate while expressing a fear of unfair arrests by law enforcement officers and the fear of potential bodily harm by vigilantes."
"The First Amendment, which guarantees our rights to voice our demands, is being muffled, strangled, and suffocated," he added. "H.B. 1 is undemocratic legislation that has stifled our constitutional rights by obstructing the activity of Black community organizers. H.B. 1 must be repealed, abolished, or simply outlawed."
Underscoring what critics of H.B. 1 say is the law's discriminatory intent, the editors of the Miami Herald on Tuesday published an editorial decrying the hypocritical leniency shown to Cuban-American demonstrators and their supporters who blocked a Miami expressway on Tuesday in a show of solidarity with anti-government protesters in Cuba.
According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, "Police encouraged people to disperse--to no avail." People at "SOS Cuba" demonstrations in Tampa and Orlando also blocked major thoroughfares and ignored police orders to disperse.
There were no arrests reported at the Miami protest. Three men were reportedly arrested in Tampa for assaulting or resisting officers, while one man was reportedly arrested in Orlando for disorderly conduct. There were no reported arrests for violations of H.B. 1.
Addressing DeSantis' dodging of reporters' questions about the uneven application of H.B. 1, the Herald editors wrote: "Honestly, we would have been more impressed if he had just responded: 'Nah, the Miami-Dade demonstrators seeking human rights in Cuba have nothing to fear from my anti-riot law. We created it to subdue Black folks seeking human rights in the United States.'"
Writing for Latino Rebels, Thomas Kennedy said: "Let's be clear here, the only thing that changed in terms of the protests are the demands and who is organizing them. When it was Black Lives Matter protests, DeSantis vowed to throw the book at them and condemned them profusely but when it was Cuban protestors, it became politically inconvenient to enforce the very same law he advocated for months ago."
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'The OK Legislature Wants Us Dead': Rights Defenders Decry Advancement of Anti-Protest Bills
The head of the state's ACLU accused Oklahoma lawmakers of "attempting to silence the voices of their constituents and criminalize vital calls for accountability and racial justice."
Apr 15, 2021
Dismissing warnings from civil liberties defenders, the Republican-controlled Oklahoma Senate on Wednesday approved a pair of bills the state's ACLU said would "chill dissent, and silence and criminalize Oklahomans who want to exercise our First Amendment right to peacefully protest."
"The foundation of this bill is to keep institutional racism alive."
--State Sen. George Young
Tulsa Public Radio reports the state Senate passed H.B. 1674 (pdf) by a largely party-line vote of 38-10. If signed by Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, the measure will grant civil and criminal immunity to drivers who "unintentionally" kill or injure people while "fleeing from a riot" if they have "reasonable belief" that doing so will protect them from harm.
Additionally, the proposed legislation would punish protesters who block traffic with up to a year behind bars and a $5,000 fine.
H.B. 1643 (pdf)--which criminalizes the online sharing of identifying information about police or public officials "with the intent to threaten, intimidate, or harass" them--was also approved by the state's upper chamber in a 39-8 vote.
Arguing in favor of H.B. 1674 ahead of the vote, state Sen. Rob Standridge (R-15) repeatedly referred to a May 2020 incident in which a pickup truck driver towing a horse trailer plowed through a crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters, injuring numerous people including a man who was paralyzed. The driver, who claimed he feared for his life, was not charged.
"This bill will protect innocent people trapped by a rioting mob," said Standridge. "Why would we wait for somebody that's fearing for their life to be charged by a DA that wants to make a political case of something? We see this around the country. We don't need it here. So, let's just put it on the books."
State Sen. Kevin Matthews (D-11), who is Black, objected to the frequent use of the word "riot" in the bill and by his GOP colleagues. Matthews noted that similar language is often used to describe the infamous 1921 massacre of Black people in his hometown of Tulsa.
"Let me give you some context," said Matthews, who leads the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission. "In my community, people were bombed from the air. People had cannons shot into our churches. Some accounts, 300 people dead and businesses burned down. And it was said that my people were 'rioting.'"
Matthews added that "it's not cute and it's not cool that we're trying to address what happened across America in passing every piece of legislation to keep people from protesting when African Americans are killed unarmed."
Another Black lawmaker, state Sen. George Young (D-48), said that "the foundation of this bill is to keep institutional racism alive. Many of you may not agree with that, but you got to look at it beyond your own positions and look at it through the eyes of others who this type of legislation would impact."
Critics of the bills including civil rights campaigners warned that the measures further endanger Black lives. Some pointed to the more than 100 incidents in just over three months last year in which drivers--both civilian and police--struck people at racial justice protests following the Minneapolis police killing of unarmed Black man George Floyd.
Others recalled Heather Heyer--a white woman who was killed in August 2017 when a white supremacist ran her over while she protested against the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virgina.
Jess Eddy, an anti-racism campaigner, told The Oklahoman that "those of us who have been organizing protests in the streets--what the United States Supreme Court has protected and established as one of the most sacred free speech forums--will now have to take extraordinary and dangerous measures to protect ourselves and our rights in Oklahoma."
The ACLU of Oklahoma condemned both of the bills, with the civil liberties group's executive director, Tamya Cox-Toure, asserting in a statement that "the Oklahoma Legislature is attempting to silence the voices of their constituents and criminalize vital calls for accountability and racial justice."
"What is unbecoming is the fact that these anti-freedom policies are passed with a veil over their true intentions--to chill speech, criminalize accountability, and let us all know that a majority of the legislature cares more about protecting the deadly power of the state than they do about rights and liberties, or even public safety."
H.B. 1674 is one of many anti-protest measures that have been recently passed or proposed in more than a dozen states. Bills granting immunity to motorists who strike protesters under certain circumstances have been introduced in numerous states.
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The Republican Party Must Be Purged Like the Nazis and Fascists
It must not be allowed, like the Confederacy was, to live on with its own "lost cause" BS mythology.
Apr 13, 2021
President Joe Biden has largely given up on trying to negotiate anything with Republicans. There's a good reason for this: the GOP is no longer a legitimate political party.
One of the most comprehensive and well respected surveys of political parties worldwide is called the Global Party Survey and came out of work done at Harvard in the US and Sydney University in Australia. The researchers note: "Drawing on survey data gathered from 1,861 party and election experts, the study uses 21 core items to estimate key ideological values, issue positions, and populist rhetoric for 1,127 parties in 170 countries."
What they found was that the Democratic Party in the US is fairly solidly within the norms for political parties in fully developed countries around the world. It resembles normal and legitimate parties in Canada and most of Western Europe.
Today the libertarian--and petro-billionaires that Ronald Reagan welcomed to the party so completely own it that no Republican is willing to admit that climate change is real, that the American people actually like Social Security and Medicare, or that people working full-time shouldn't live in poverty.
The Republican party, however, both behaves and is ideologically most similar to Hungary's Fidesz party, Turkey's AKP party and Poland's PiS party.
All three are, essentially, fascist parties. As Zach Beauchamp of Vox notes, Turkey is one of the world's leading jailers of journalists, Poland's party has threatened judgeswho don't rule the way they like with criminal punishment, and Hungary scapegoats immigrants as a strategy to gain and grow political power.
Victor Orban's Fidesz Party is particularly worth examining, because it sometimes appears that Donald Trump was using it as a model for his own rise to power.
For twenty years Hungary was a functioning democracy; today it's a corrupt oligarchy.
In ten short years since he was first elected in 2010, Prime Minister Viktor Orban, now fabulously wealthy by Hungarian standards and an oligarch himself, succeeded in transforming his nation's government from a functioning European democracy into an autocratic regime of single-party-rule.
Orban took over the Fidesz Party, once a conventional "conservative" political party like our GOP pre-Reagan, with the theme of restoring "Christian" purity and "making Hungary great again." His rallies regularly draw tens of thousands.
He campaigned on building a wall across the entirety of Hungary's southern border, a promise he has largely kept.
He altered the nation's constitution to do what we'd call gerrymandering and voter suppression, ensuring that his Party, Fidesz, would win more than 2/3rds of the votes in pretty much every federal election well into the future.
He's now packed the courts so thoroughly that legal challenges against him and his Party go nowhere.
His Party has rewritten elementary school textbooks to say that refugees entering the country are a threat because "it can be problematic for different cultures to coexist." Using this logic, he has locked up refugee children in cages.
When the Hungarian Helsinki Committee said "the indefinite detention of many vulnerable migrants, including families with small children, is cruel and inhuman," Orban said the Syrian refugees seeking asylum "pose a security risk and endanger the continent's Christian culture and identity." He added, "Immigration brings increased crime, especially crimes against women, and lets in the virus of terrorism."
Five years to the week before American Nazis rallied in Charlottesville and murdered Heather Heyer, a group of some 700 right-wing "patriots" held a torchlight parade that ended in front of the homes of Hungary's largest minority group, chanting "We will set your houses on fire!" Orban's police watched without intervening. Zsolt Bayer, one of the founders of Orban's party, provoked the demonstration when he called the Roma "animals...unfit to live among people." Orban refused to condemn him or the anti-Roma violence.
He's handed government contracts to his favored few, elevating an entire new class of pro-Orban businesspeople who are in the process of cementing control of the nation's economy, as those who opposed him have lost their businesses, been forced to sell, and often fled the country.
Virtually the entire nation's press is now in the hands of oligarchs and corporations loyal to him, with talk radio and television across the country singing his praises daily. Billboards and social media proclaim his patriotism. His media allies are now reaching out to purchase media across the rest of Europe to spread his rightwing message.
Last year he began dismantling the Hungarian Science Academy, replacing or simply firing scientists who acknowledge climate change, which he has called "left wing trickery made up by Obama."
The world, and particularly the EU, have watched this 10-year juggernaut with increasing alarm, and even the EU's 2015 and 2018 attempts to essentially impeach Orban have backfired, increasing his two reelection margins as his handmaids in the media proclaim him a victim of the "European deep state" and "meddling foreigners," particularly George Soros (who, ironically, once paid for a young Orban to study in Britain).
While he blasts Soros and his own country's Jewish leaders with anti-Semitic tropes, he was feted by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who called him "a true friend of Israel." Orban replied, "A Hungarian patriot and a Jewish Israeli patriot will always find something in common."
Last summer, the same month Rudy Giuliani said he had a former Ukrainian prosecutor willing to testify that Joe Biden was corrupt, Donald Trump invited Orban to the White House for a state visit; Orban has been one of Trump's two primary sources of information about how Ukraine opposed or tried to "sabotage" him.
In a rally three months before his White House meeting, Orban said that countries that accept refugees are producing "mixed-race nations."
Orban is now ruthlessly using his own nation's diplomatic and criminal justice systems to aid foreign criminal oligarchs, having hired his own local versions of Bill Barr and Mike Pompeo.
The American Republican Party in many ways followed Orban's example as it moved from being a legitimate political party to a fascist outlier on the world stage. This happened in four steps.
The first step was when a Republican majority on the Supreme Court ruled in 1976 and 1978 that if politicians or a political party wanted to take vast sums of money from individual billionaires or large corporations, that was no longer to be considered bribery or political corruption. Instead, the Court said, and doubled down on in 2010 with Citizens United, money is not money but is, in fact, "First Amendment protected free speech."
Back in the 1970s the Democratic party was so awash in cash from labor unions that they largely ignored the ruling, but the GOP jumped in with both feet and the ocean of money that flowed from that effort floated Ronald Reagan into the White House in 1981. It also led him to make common cause with a number of rightwing billionaires, who today essentially own the Republican Party.
In some ways, the network these billionaires have created is actually larger than the GOP. As Ken Vogel noted for Politico in 2016:
[Charles] Koch and his brother David Koch have quietly assembled, piece by piece, a privatized political and policy advocacy operation like no other in American history that today includes hundreds of donors and employs 1,200 full-time, year-round staffers in 107 offices nationwide. That's about 3 1/2 times as many employees as the Republican National Committee and its congressional campaign arms had on their main payrolls last month, according to POLITICO's analysis of tax and campaign documents and interviews with sources familiar with the network. And the staggering sum the network plans to spend in the 2016 election run-up--$889 million--is more than double what the RNC spent in the previous presidential cycle.
Reagan put into his cabinet and as his heads of regulatory agencies former lobbyists and other corrupt officials, beginning the internal destruction of a US government that was once responsive to its average citizens.
We've now reached the point where the Republican Party can no longer be reformed; it must be either torn down and rebuilt or eliminated from American political life at the ballot box if our government is to regain anything resembling the ability to govern on behalf of the majority of its citizens.
The second step was in the 1990s, when Newt Gingrich arrived in Washington DC and essentially proclaimed that power was the only thing that mattered in politics. He shut down and threatened to shut down the government repeatedly, impeached Bill Clinton for private, consensual extramarital sex, and established as a political principle for the Republican party that reality didn't matter as long as you could sell what you were doing to voters.
The best example of this was his so-called "Contract With America," which mostly boiled down to tax cuts for the very rich, destruction of labor unions and cutting benefits for low-income and working people, and deregulation of American corporations.
The third step toward fascism for the Republican Party came with Donald Trump. Trump said out loud what Nixon, Reagan and both Bush's said with dog whistles like the Willie Horton ads: the GOP was now officially the party of white supremacy. Everything else was subordinate to that.
And the fourth step that we see playing out today is based on the classic fascist strategy of the Big Lie.
Mussolini's Big Lie had to do with Italy's "mutilated victory" that helped end World War I. He said for Italy to return to its glory days, it would have to establish an empire and he was the man to do it.
Hitler's Big Lie was that Germany had been "stabbed in the back" by Jewish and socialist negotiators at the end of World War I, and that they were actually on the verge of winning the war when these people sold Germany out.
Trumps Big Lie, beyond "American carnage," was that he won the 2020 election but was denied his victory because of "voter fraud" perpetrated by Black people in majority-Black cities like Detroit, Philadelphia and Milwaukee. He continues to sell this lie, and has been joined by most of the institutional Republican Party in it.
Today the libertarian--and petro-billionaires that Ronald Reagan welcomed to the party so completely own it that no Republican is willing to admit that climate change is real, that the American people actually like Social Security and Medicare, or that people working full-time shouldn't live in poverty.
Political positions that are fabulously popular--from Covid relief to rebuilding our nation's crumbling infrastructure--are now routinelly opposed by the GOP not because they're bad policy but because their billionaire patrons don't want their taxes raised to pay for them.
We've now reached the point where the Republican Party can no longer be reformed; it must be either torn down and rebuilt or eliminated from American political life at the ballot box if our government is to regain anything resembling the ability to govern on behalf of the majority of its citizens.
It's a job some of the "never Trump" Republicans are trying to undertake at this moment, and most Americans wish them well.
And today's Trump-twisted, corrupt GOP must not be allowed, like the Confederacy was, to carry forward its own "lost cause" bullshit mythology about the 2020 election or "hugs and kisses" to the Capitol Police on January 6th. We now have the benefit of hindsight to know how that worked out.
This post originally appeared at hartmannreport.com, but is published here with permission of the author.
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Analysis Finds Jan. 6 Insurrectionist Mob Was 'Hodgepodge' of Unaffiliated Right-Wing Extremists
"Inspired by a range of extremist narratives, conspiracy theories, and personal motivations, individual believers made up a significant portion of the crowd at the Capitol."
Mar 03, 2021
While the overwhelming majority of individuals charged so far in connection with the deadly January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol are unconnected to organized militias or other known extremist groups, a preliminary assessment conducted by researchers at George Washington University found they comprise a "hodgepodge" of individuals inspired by far-right ideologies.
"The events of January 6th also allow us an opportunity to assess how the domestic violent extremist threat may take shape in the coming months and years."
--GWU Program on Extremism report
Researchers at GWU's Program on Extremism analyzed the cases of 257 alleged participants the mob attack on the Capitol--inspired by former President Donald Trump and his lie that the 2020 presidential election was "stolen"--and found them to be a "heterogenous group."
The researchers divided the 257 individuals, who include 221 men and 36 women, into three groups: "militant networks," "organized clusters," and "inspired believers."
Militant networks, the report states, represent "the apex of organizational planning by domestic violent extremist groups for and on January 6th," and are "characterized by hierarchical organization and chains of command."
"Leaders of established domestic violent extremist groups issued orders or directives to members of their groups, encouraging them to travel to Washington in advance of the siege," the report states. "Unlike individuals in the other categories, not only did these militant networks plan to attend protests on the 6th, but they are also alleged to have planned in advance to breach the Capitol and, in many cases, conduct violence inside the walls of the building."
The second category, organized clusters, is "composed of small, close-knit groups of individuals who allegedly participated in the siege together, usually comprising family members, friends, and acquaintances."
"Finally, the remainder of the alleged siege participants can be categorized as inspired believers," the report says. "These individuals, according to available evidence, were neither participants in an established violent extremist group nor connected to any of the other individuals who are alleged to have stormed the Capitol."
"Inspired by a range of extremist narratives, conspiracy theories, and personal motivations, individual believers made up a significant portion of the crowd at the Capitol," it says.
"Perhaps the most striking finding in this report is the range of far- and extreme-right actors who took part in the siege," the report states. "While such groups often splinter across various lines and form bitter rivalries with one another, it is clear that in some cases they have found enough common cause to mobilize together."
"The siege is not the first recent example of increased alliances among disparate right-wing groups in America," it continues. "The Charlottesville Unite the Right Rally in 2017, for example, while a different kind of event, also succeeded in bringing together a range of American groups over, among other things, their deeply-held conspiratorial anti-Semitism."
The report concludes:
The events of January 6th also allow us an opportunity to assess how the domestic violent extremist threat may take shape in the coming months and years, and if the siege may have some role in this. As law enforcement officials continue to identify and prosecute individuals involved in the storming of the Capitol on January 6th, new cases of domestic violent extremists inspired by the siege to conduct their own violent attacks have already emerged.
Since the siege, federal law enforcement arrested at least four individuals with links to domestic violent extremist ideologies--one involving a militia affiliate from Northern California and another involving two associates of the Boogaloo Boys in Kentucky, all of whom reportedly believed that the siege would spark a new civil war in the United States.
"Moving forward, it is highly likely that violent extremists of multiple ideological persuasions, inspired by the events of January 6th, 2021, will add to the already bloated federal domestic extremism caseload for prosecutors throughout the country," it warns.
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Bond Modification Sought After Alleged Kenosha Killer Kyle Rittenhouse Drinks Beer, Flashes White Power Signs With So-Called 'Proud Boys'
"The defendant's continued association with members of a group that prides itself on violence, and the use of their symbols, raises the significant possibility of future harm."
Jan 13, 2021
Criminal justice reform advocates on Thursday reaffirmed calls for cash bail reform following reports that Kyle Rittenhouse, the alleged killer of two people in Kenosha, Wisconsin last August, was recently spotted drinking in a bar and flashing white power signs with men who local prosecutors said in a court filing were neo-fascist Proud Boys.
Kenosha County prosecutors on Wednesday asked a judge to modify Rittenhouse's bond agreement after he was seen visiting Pudgy's Pub in Mount Pleasant with his mother on January 5, the same day he pleaded not guilty to first-degree intentional homicide charges in connection with the shooting deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber at a Black Lives Matter protest on August 25, 2020.
The August demonstration was one of many that followed the police shooting and paralysis of Jacob Blake, a Black man. Rittenhouse quickly became a cause celebre among white nationalists and other far-right figures, who claimed he acted in self-defense and helped raise the funds to cover his $2 million bond.
Now prosecutors want the 18-year-old Rittenhouse banned from bars and from fraternization with white supremacists following surveillance footage showing him in the bar apparently drinking beers while wearing a "Free as Fuck" t-shirt, flashing white power signs, and posing for maskless photos with apparent Proud Boys supporters, who loudly serendaded the alleged killer with "Proud of Your Boy," a song from the 1992 Disney film Aladdin coopted as the hate group's unofficial anthem.
People ages 18-20 can legally drink alcohol in Wisconsin if accompanied by a parent, guardian, or spouse. However, prosecutors argued that "the defendant's continued association with members of a group that prides itself on violence, and the use of their symbols, raises the significant possibility of future harm."
"Further, this association may serve to intimidate potential witnesses, who may be unwilling to testify in this case because they may fear that the defendant's associates with harm them or their families," they added.
Cash bail abolitionists and other progressive observers were quick to note the hypocrisy of so-called law-and-order conservatives who oppose criminal justice reform--unless the criminals in question espouse their beliefs.
Others noted the disparities in treatment between Black victims of police shootings and white supremacist shooters like Rittenhouse--an aspiring cop who was praised by officers before he allegedly killed Rosenbaum and Huber and was then allowed to go home after shooting them.
Proud Boys have a history of violent attacks and were prominent participants in both the 2017 United the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia--where antiracism protester Heather Heyer was killed--and the January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol insurrection incited by President Donald Trump, some Republican members of Congress, and others peddling lies that the 2020 presidential election was "stolen."
Although Proud Boys are a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group, Trump has been reluctant to condemn them. At a 2020 presidential debate last September, Trump told Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by," remarks widely interpreted as a shout-out and marching orders.
Rittenhouse is due back in court on March 10 for his first pre-trial appearance.
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Black Woman 'Heartbroken' After Vicious Attack by Racist MAGA Mob in Downtown Los Angeles
"All of a sudden I'm just getting cornered by 30, 40 people," said Berlinda Nibo. "That's what started all of them to jump in."
Jan 07, 2021
Fears of racially motivated attacks by white supremacist supporters of President Donald Trump after this week's deadly insurrection in Washington, D.C. were realized as a MAGA mob viciously attacked a Black woman and other people of color in downtown Los Angeles Wednesday afternoon.
"They're yelling at me because of my color, calling me the N-word calling me the B-word, saying, 'All lives matter, Black lives doesn't matter.'"
--Berlinda Nibo
Defying record-setting Covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths, scores of largely maskless Trump loyalists took to the streets in the middle of the nation's second-largest city to protest a lie--that the 2020 presidential election was "stolen" from the president.
Berlinda Nibo, a 25-year-old downtown resident, was walking in her neighborhood when she came upon the "Stop the Steal" demonstration. Nibo told KCAL that some of the Trumpists then began harassing her and then physically attacked her.
"They're yelling at me because of my color," she said, "calling me the N-word calling me the B-word, saying, 'All lives matter, Black lives doesn't matter.'"
Watch:
Nibo told The Root that when a white woman yelled at her to take off her mask, she shouted back to put on a mask, and that's when the mob surrounded her.
"All of a sudden I'm just getting cornered by 30, 40 people," she recalled. "That's what started all of them to jump in and shoving me around. Then some lady comes out of nowhere and starts tugging on my hair, trying to pull my hair off of my head."
Nibo told KCAL that she was smacked in the face and that a man pepper-sprayed her in the eyes. Freelance photojournalist Raquel Natalicchio was covering the rally and witnessed the attack.
"I'm definitely shaken to see men beat a woman in that way, especially since there's no excuse for it," Natalicchio told The Root. "But also it was very disheartening to see so many people, like over 50 people watching this happen and nobody stepped in."
Nibo said that strangers eventually intervened to help her, including the burly, red-bearded man seen in some of Natalicchio's photos.
"He was whispering in my ear going 'You're OK, I got you, I've got you, don't do anything. These people are literally trying to kill you,'" Nibo told KCAL."If not for him stepping in at that moment, these people would have literally tried to kill me."
This woman was walking home.
She lives on Hill St. , two blocks away from LA City Hall where a "Stop the Steal" Rally was taking place.
A mob of at least 20 Trump supporters circled her, beat her and maced her. It took two bystanders to pull her out. No arrests were made. pic.twitter.com/kHkFAMlf2v-- Raquel Natalicchio (@RaquelNPhoto) January 7, 2021
Other witnesses, however, said the man was no hero, and had verbally abused Nibo and at least one other woman. The eyewitnesses, including Chad Loder, a self-described "anti-fascist" and "anti-racist," posted multiple videos on Twitter supporting their claim.
NBC Los Angeles reports six people were arrested at the rally. None of the arrests involved the attack on Nibo, which Los Angeles police said they were "looking into."
On Friday, the Los Angeles Police Department released a statement promising a "thorough investigation."
Nibo told KCAL that the attack left her afraid to walk down her own street.
"I don't understand what's going on in the world," she said. "I'm saddened by it. I'm hearbroken by it."
Trump's racist rhetoric and refusal to promptly disavow white supremacists have been widely blamed for soaring hate crimes during his tenure. According to the most recent FBI statistics, there were more than 7,000 attacks and 51 hate-motivated murders reported in 2019--more than double the previous year's total.
Although the Department of Homeland Security asserts that white supremacists pose the greatest domestic terrorism threat in the U.S., Trump has largely downplayed or ignored the danger they pose. Less than a month into his administration, for example, he pushed to refocus Countering Violent Extremism--a government program tasked with combating all violent ideologies--solely on radical Islamists.
Trump has courted and inspired white supremacists from the day he announced his bid for the presidency in 2015. Not only has he refused to condemn neo-Nazis and right-wing vigilante killers, he has demonized the Black Lives Matter movement and infamously called white supremacists who attended the 2017 Charlottesville, Virginia rally where anti-racist protester Heather Heyer was murdered "very fine people."
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Proud Boys Sued by Historic Black Church After Leader Admits to Burning Black Lives Matter Sign During DC Rally
Washington, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine said the December 12 "hate crime" was meant to "terrorize Black people."
Jan 03, 2021
An historic Black church in Washington, D.C. on Monday sued the Proud Boys, the right-wing hate group whose leader acknowledged burning a Black Lives Matter sign at the house of worship during a violent December 2020 rally in support of President Donald Trump.
The lawsuit (pdf), filed by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs; and the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP on behalf of the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church against Proud Boys Interntational, LLC, accuses members of the group of "engaging in acts of terror and vandalizing church property in an effort to intimidate the church and silence its support for racial justice."
On December 12, 2020, hundreds of Proud Boys from across the country descended on the nation's capital, where they confronted and attacked counterprotesters in the streets. At least four people were stabbed during the clashes, which some critics linked to Trump's September presidential debate directive to the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by."
According to the lawsuit, members of the Proud Boys had prepared for violence ahead of the December gathering, exhorting each other to "buy ammo [and] clean your guns." One Proud Boy wrote that "tonight we keep our enemies awake, tonight we become nightmares."
Designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the all-male Proud Boys are known for their white nationalist, Islamophobic, and misogynistic rhetoric, as well as their presence at the deadly 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Speaking against the advice of his attorney, Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio repeatedly claimed to have burned Metropolitan AME's Black Lives Matter sign during the December demonstration.
"Let me make this simple," Tarrio told the Washington Post last month. "I did it."
"I have nothing to hide," he said, explaining that he believes Black Lives Matter--the nonviolent movement for racial justice--"has terrorized the citizens of this country."
"In the burning of the BLM sign, I was the one that lit it on fire," Tarrio said on a far-right podcast last month, according to The Independent. "I was the person that went ahead and put the lighter to it and engulfed it in flames, and I am damn proud that I did."
Washington, D.C. police and the FBI are investigating the buring of Black Lives Matter banners at Metropolitan AME and Asbury United Methodist Church--also on December 12--as possible hate crimes, although Tarrio claims he was unaware the churches are predominantly Black.
Karl Racine, the D.C. attorney general, said in a letter to U.S. Attorney for the Disrict of Columbia Michael Sherwin that the Proud Boys' actions on December 12 were meant to "terrorize Black people," and that they "violated D.C. law and were hate crimes."
"They harmed people of color, and every person who lives and works in our city who believes in fairness, justice, and racial equity," asserted Racine.
Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said in a statement that "white supremacists like the Proud Boys would rather see the country burn than to see it united together under justice and freedom for all."
"Black churches and other religious institutions have a long and ugly history of being targeted by white supremacists in racist and violent attacks meant to intimidate and create fear," added Clarke. "Our lawsuit aims to hold those who engage in such action accountable. We are proud to represent Metropolitan AME, which has a long history of standing against bigotry and hate and whose courage and determination to fight back is a beacon of hope for the community."
In a Washington Post op-ed following the vandalism, Metropolitan AME pastor Rev. William H. Lamar IV said he was "deeply disturbed" by the incident.
"But I am more disturbed by the continued mythology of imperial America," he wrote. "This mythology supports those who commit violence against human beings for political ends, deny citizens their right to vote, denigrate sacred spaces, and claim as their own whatever they survey."
"It mattered not that the land was ours," added Lamar. "It mattered not that the sign was ours. The mythology that motivated the perpetrators... was the underbelly of the American narrative--that white men can employ violence to take what they want and do what they want and call that criminality justice, freedom, and liberty."
The lawsuit states that Metropolitan AME is seeking "compensatory, consequential, and punitive damages," as well as "injunctive relief."
The suit states that the Proud Boys are planning to return to Washington, D.C. for rallies on January 6 and January 20 "to continue their conspiracy to engage in violent and destructive acts against their 'enemies,' including racial justice activists and supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement."
The lawsuit further states that Tarrio said Proud Boys members would dress "incognito" instead of in the black and yellow attire mandated by the group's bylaws, that they would "spread across downtown D.C. in smaller teams" to "conceal intentions" and "pose as a friend" in order to "stir up waters to catch fish" and "keep others in suspended terror."
However, Tarrio's attendance at Wednesday's rally was thrown into question following his arrest Monday evening upon arrival in the capital. According to D.C. police, Tarrio--who lives in Miami--faces misdemeanor property destruction and firearms charges for burning the church banner and for having banned high-capacity gun magazines in his possession when he was apprehended.
(Note: This article has been updated to include news of Enrique Tarrio's arrest.)
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Utah Lawmakers Accused of Seeking to Legalize Drivers Running Over Street Protesters
"Legislators are considering a bill that would let drivers off the hook for mowing down protesters."
Nov 18, 2020
Utah lawmakers are being condemned this week for advancing a bill with provisions penalizing demonstrators who obstruct traffic during a "riot" while absolving any driver who injures or kills a protester, as long as the motorist was fleeing in fear of their life, which critics denounced as an attempt to legalize running people over.
The bill would "create an affirmative defense for... individuals who may disagree with the protests."
--William Carlson, Salt Lake DAO
Jon Hawkins, the Republican lawmaker who introduced the bill that the state legislature will consider during its upcoming general session, claimed that he doesn't "think that purposefully using your vehicle to cause bodily injury is a normal situation that falls into this bill."
But William Carlson, chief criminal justice policy adviser for the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office, pointed out that "creating a criminal defense for drivers" would make it "much more complicated" to prosecute drivers such as James Fields, the "white supremacist who in 2017 plowed his car into a crowd of peaceful anti-racist protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia," killing Heather Heyer.
That's because Fields might have qualified "for the legal defense proposed by Hawkins" if it were deemed that he was "fleeing from a riot and 'under a reasonable belief' that he [was] in danger of serious injury or death," the Salt Lake Tribune reported.
Tribune cartoonist Pat Bagley quipped that "Utah legislators are considering a bill that would let drivers off the hook for mowing down protesters."
Critics say that decriminalizing vehicular homicide in some instances, as state legislators have proposed, might encourage violence against protesters, especially given that, as the ACLU's Marina Lowe put it, "one person's protest is another person's riot."
Utah legislators' lenient position on deadly car attacks is related, some observers noted, to their disapproving views on civil disobedience. Carlson argued that the bill would "create an affirmative defense for... individuals who may disagree with the protests."
"The legislation... would also make it a third-degree felony to obstruct traffic during a riot," the Tribune reported. "Protesters found guilty of the offense could face up to five years in prison."
According to the newspaper, the bill is "drawing opposition from prosecutors, defense attorneys, and civil liberties advocates," who argue that it would criminalize "one of the defining features of American protests."
The Tribune explained the legislation's repressive implications:
While Utah law already prohibits obstructing a roadway or sidewalk, Hawkins' bill would elevate this behavior to a felony if it's part of a riot. State statute considers a riot to be a gathering of people who are engaging in "tumultuous or violent conduct" that can cause public alarm, and defense attorney Mark Moffat told lawmakers that a broad interpretation of this definition could encompass almost any demonstration.
Demonstrations "often involve hundreds, sometimes thousands, of individuals who are marching down the street in protest of a particular event that occurred in our community or nationally," Moffat said.
If this bill were passed into law, Moffat added, "Every single one of those people could be charged with a felony."
Bagley captured what he considers the reactionary nature of the Utah bill in a cartoon:
"Instead of addressing systematic problems in our society that led to protests of last summer," one critic tweeted, "GOP lawmakers want to increase penalties for dissent, while allowing motorists to run over protesters with no legal sanction."
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Raskin Raps Trump Administration for Ignoring White Supremacist Threat in Law Enforcement
Previously redacted portions of a 2006 intelligence assessment reveal the FBI predicted violent racists would inflitrate U.S. police departments.
Sep 29, 2020
Rep. Jamie Raskin on Tuesday released an uncensored version of a 2006 FBI intelligence assessment warning of the growing danger of white supremacist infiltration of U.S. law enforcement, and upbraided the Trump administration for ignoring the threat.
Raskin (D-Md.), chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform's Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, published the unredacted document (pdf), titled White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement, before a congressional hearing about the subject Tuesday morning.
"The FBI saw long ago the multiple potential dangers associated with violent white supremacy and its efforts to infiltrate local law enforcement with ideas, attitudes, and personnel," Raskin said in a statement. "Unfortunately, the FBI's recent refusal to acknowledge and combat this threat under the Trump administration--just like its refusal to appear today--constitutes a serious dereliction of duty."
"The infiltration of certain law enforcement departments by racist ideas, attitudes, and personnel is a clear and present danger to the vast majority of law-abiding officers, to minority communities and citizens, and to the general public," Raskin added.
Watch the subcommittee's Tuesday hearing, "Confronting White Supremacy, Part IV":
The Intercept published a redacted version of the assessment in 2017. In June, Rep. Norma Torres (D-Calif.) led more than two dozen lawmakers in calling on the Department of Justice to release the unredacted document, and asking the DOJ and FBI to explain what they've done to combat the problem of racist infiltration. Torres has repeatedly demanded that the Trump administration publish the full version of the document.
However, the bureau--and the Trump administration more broadly--has refused to acknowledge the threat of white supremacist infiltration in law enforcement.
The unredacted portions of the document include:
- A "key judgment" by the FBI that "white supremacist infiltration of law enforcement can result in other abuses of authority and passive tolerance of racism within communities served."
- An assessment that "having personnel within law enforcement agencies has historically been and will continue to be a desired asset for white supremacist groups seeking to anticipate law enforcement interest in and actions against them."
- A pattern of "self-initiated efforts by white supremacist sympathizers, particularly among those already within law enforcement, to use their professional skills for the benefit of white supremacist causes."
- A prediction that racist officers will assist white supremacists: "Factors that might generate sympathies among existing law enforcement personnel and cause them to volunteer their support to white supremacist causes could include hostility toward developments in U.S. domestic policies... that conflict with white supremacist ideologies."
"These newly revealed passages underscore the seriousness of the threat posed by white supremacists to law enforcement personnel and the public at large," said Raskin. "That the full document has been withheld, despite enormous public pressure, at a time when the white supremacist threat is rampant again, is indefensible."
"I can only assume that the primary motivation in stonewalling the release of this document is either to hide the failure to address the threat or to please this administration, which has repeatedly sought to downplay the dangers of white supremacy as it has sought to downplay the dangers of the coronavirus crisis," Raskin added.
The unredacted portions of the 2006 FBI report have proved alarmingly prescient. White supremacist infiltration of law enforcement has been extensively documented in journalistic and academic investigations. Meanwhile, police across the nation--including in some of the country's most progressive cities and states--have worked with or otherwise assisted white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and other racists against anti-racist protesters.
President Donald Trump has courted and inspired white supremacists from the day he announced his bid for the presidency. Not only has he refused to condemn neo-Nazis and right-wing vigilante killers, he even infamously called white supremacists who attended the 2017 Charlottesville, Virginia protest where anti-racist protester Heather Heyer was murdered "very fine people."
The president has also habitually downplayed right-wing violence, even as his own Department of Homeland Security warned earlier this month that white supremacist pose the greatest domestic terror threat, and even as such hateful ideologues keep attacking and killing people.
Critics have blasted Trump--whose reelection bid relies heavily upon "law-and-order" rhetoric replete with thinly-veiled racist appeals to white voters--for ignoring white supremacist violence while demonizing overwhelmingly peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters. The president and some of his prominent supporters have repeatedly conflated the Movement for Black Lives with what the FBI has dubbed "Black identity extremists."
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