Tag Archives: white supremacists

The other epidemic: white supremacists in law enforcement

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Law enforcement agencies have been breeding grounds for far-right ideology for decades, and it’s not just an American problem.

By Simon Purdue,  Published 8-6-2020 by openDemocracy

George Floyd protests on their ninth day in Miami. Photo: Mike Shaheen/Wikimedia Commons/CC

 

As protests continue to bring cities across the United States to a standstill, the problem of racist policing is more evident than ever before. The murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis PD was just the latest in a long line of violent assaults on people of color by law enforcement, and his name joins an ever-growing list of people who have been killed by those who are sworn to protect and serve. The United States is grappling with the issue of police racism in front of the world, and the scale of the conversation currently happening is unprecedented, and sadly still not enough.

While the unconscious bias of some officers of the law has been laid bare for all to see, the conscious and hateful bias of others has remained largely in the shadows. The systemic issue of racial profiling is evident, but the hidden epidemic of far-right activism in police forces around the country is an insidious and even more dangerous threat. The links between the police and organized racism are as old as the institutions themselves. Continue reading →

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Why are white supremacists protesting to ‘reopen’ the US economy?

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Joey Gibson, leader of the right-wing group Patriot Prayer, addresses a crowd on April 19, 2020, in Olympia, Washington, insisting the state lift restrictions put in place to help fight the coronavirus outbreak. Karen Ducey/Getty Images

Shannon Reid, University of North Carolina – Charlotte and Matthew Valasik, Louisiana State University

A series of protests, primarily in state capitals, are demanding the end of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions. Among the protesters are people who express concern about their jobs or the economy as a whole.

But there are also far-right conspiracy theorists, white supremacists like Proud Boys and citizens’ militia members at these protests. The exact number of each group that attends these protests is unknown, since police have not traditionally monitored these groups, but signs and symbols of far right groups have been seen at many of these protests across the country. Continue reading →

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What an American Terrorist Looks Like

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Despite racist and anti-immigrant scapegoating, data shows that most American terrorists are resentful White men inspired by White supremacist and misogynist rhetoric.

By Tracy Matsue Loeffelholz. Published 8-13-2019 by YES! Magazine

“Invasion.” President Trump has used that very word about immigration at the southern border 19 times at rallies since he took office, according to a recent USA Today analysis. And six tweets between October 2018 and June 2019 use the word “invasion” that way.

An arrest affidavit for 21-year-old Patrick Crusius, the man charged in the Aug. 3 mass shooting in an El Paso, Texas, Walmart that left 22 people dead and 24 wounded, reportedly says Crusius told police he was targeting Mexicans. Crusius allegedly referenced wanting to stop a “Hispanic invasion” of Texas in a statement on a right-wing online messaging board about 20 minutes before the shooting.

In one week, between July 31 and August 3, three White men massacred and wounded dozens of people in Gilroy, California; Dayton, Ohio; and El Paso. Media often jump to analysis of mass shootings around gun control and mental illness. But what about their connection to electoral politics? Or misogyny in the face of feminist movements?

A lot of data exists to answer some of these questions and challenge notions that a mass shooter is likely a jihadist, or a mentally ill person illegally stockpiling assault weapons. In fact, the rise in these public-place mass shootings and extremist violence correlates with the rise in rhetoric on White supremacy, xenophobia, and misogyny. In the data, a picture emerges of the American terrorist and what sets him off

 

Tracy Matsue Loeffelholz is the creative director for YES! Media. Find her on Twitter @LoeffelholzDunn.

 

This work is republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.

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Inside the Secret Border Patrol Facebook Group Where Agents Joke About Migrant Deaths and Post Sexist Memes

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The three-year-old group, which has roughly 9,500 members, shared derogatory comments about Latina lawmakers who plan to visit a controversial Texas detention facility on Monday, calling them “scum buckets” and “hoes.”

By A.C. Thompson  Published 7-1-2019 by ProPublica

(Photo: Legal Loop)

 

Members of a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents joked about the deaths of migrants, discussed throwing burritos at Latino members of Congress visiting a detention facility in Texas on Monday and posted a vulgar illustration depicting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez engaged in oral sex with a detained migrant, according to screenshots of their postings.

In one exchange, group members responded with indifference and wisecracks to the post of a news story about a 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant who died in May while in custody at a Border Patrol station in Weslaco, Texas. One member posted a GIF of Elmo with the quote, “Oh well.” Another responded with an image and the words “If he dies, he dies.” Continue reading →

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Citing CIA’s Dark History, Librarians Protest Agency’s Recruiting at Their Conference

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“Everything they stand for is a violation of the values of librarianship, so we protested.”

By Andrea Germanos, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 6-24-2019

A protester holds a sign in front of the CIA’s exhibitor booth at the American Library Association’s 2019 annual conference. (Photo: Callan Bignoli)

A group of librarians demanded the American Library Association abide by its values on Friday as they staged a protest of the CIA’s presence and recruitment at the professional organization’s annual conference.

At the convention, which is taking place June 20-25 in Washington, D.C., the CIA is among the hundreds of exhibitors. Continue reading →

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Despite Christchurch Massacre and Others, Trump Refuses to Join ‘Unprecedented’ Global Effort to Tackle Racist Extremism Online

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“To be honest, I do not understand the United States,” said New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern

By Andrea Germanos, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 5-15-2019

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron this week launched the Christchurch Call, a global initiative to combat online extremism. (Photo: @JaneCoombsNZ/Twitter)

The White House announced Wednesday it will not join a global initiative, launched in the wake of a massacre in New Zealand two months ago, to tackle racist and extremist online content.

“By not standing alongside other world leaders to fight hate,” said the Southern Poverty Law Center in response, “President Trump has shown once again that he doesn’t understand the importance of white supremacy in fueling terrorism.” Continue reading →

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Just Like Trump, Media Outlets Rarely Label Far-Right Attacks ‘Terrorism’: Study

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A rare exception in the glaring trend came last month when New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was swift to characterize the massacre in Christchurch as the work of a white nationalist terrorist

By Julia Conley, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 4-10-2019

Governor Wolf Joins Pittsburgh in mourning after the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting. Photo: Governor Tom Wolf/flickr

A new study shows that media outlets frequently echo the instinct of political leaders like President Donald Trump when they refuse to label the violence of far-right assailants as “terrorism” while showing significantly less reluctance if an attack was carried out by an Islamic extremist.

The British media monitoring firm Signal AI found that most news sources are quick to draw links between incidents identified as “Islamist” attacks and terrorism, but are far less likely to do the same when an attack suspect is linked to far-right ideologies like white nationalism. Continue reading →

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‘Bigotry Is Deadly’: Warnings of ‘Normalized Hate Speech’ After Latest Threats Targeting Rep. Ilhan Omar

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Despite threats to the congresswoman’s safety, Trump continued “using her as fodder for ridicule” in a weekend speech

By Jessica Corbett, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 4-7-2019

Ilhan Omar. Photo: Leopaltik1242 [CC BY-SA 4.0]

Advocacy groups, progressives, and politicians are warning about the dangers of “normalized hate speech” and Islamophobia after the latest round of threats targeting Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Somali refugee and one of the first Muslim congresswomen.

“The political environment, led by an Islamophobe in the White House, has normalized hate speech and emboldened bigots in their actions,” Afaf Nasher, executive director of the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NY), said Saturday. Continue reading →

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South African Officials Among Many Denouncing Trump’s “Disgusting” White Supremacist Talking Point on Land Reforms

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“Tucker Carlson is acting as a direct pathway communicating narratives between white nationalists and the president of the United States.”

By Julia Conley, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 8-23-2018

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa rejected President Donald Trump’s attempt to insert himself into the debate of land expropriation in South Africa, using debunked white nationalist talking points. (Photo: GovernmentZA/Flickr/cc)

After apparently tuning in to Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Wednesday evening, President Donald Trump waded into the affairs of the South African government, pushing a talking point favored by white nationalists regarding the country’s land reforms—and angering South Africans as well as others who understand South Africa’s history of racial oppression.


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Standing With ESPN Journalist Against Trump’s White Supremacy, #NaziBucketChallenge Goes Viral

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Calling out Trump’s racist views, critics stand in solidarity with ESPN anchor

By Julia Conley, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 9-15-2017

Protest rally in Boston vs ‘white supremacy’. Photo: YouTube

In a display of a solidarity with the black female ESPN sportscaster under attack by the White House for calling out President Donald Trump as a “white supremacist” earlier this week, the hashtag #NaziBucketChallenge was going viral on Friday as people from all walks of life waited to see if they would receive the same kind of harsh treatment for criticizing the president publicly.

It all started on Monday, when ESPN anchor Jemele Hill called Trump a white supremacist on her Twitter account.

Jemele Hill Tweet

The controversy intensifed, however, after White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders publicly called for Hill’s firing during a White House press briefing on Wednesday.

But Hill’s criticism, which is widely shared among private citizens and public figures, hardly came out of nowhere.

Her tweet followed, among other examples, the firestorm surrounding Trump’s response to last month’s deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, in which he failed to denounce the neo-Nazis who organized the gathering and insisted that counter-protesters were equally to blame for the violence that erupted.

The comments also came two weeks after Trump’s pardon of his longtime supporter Joe Arpaio, the former sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, who detained Latinos with no evidence of any wrongdoing and established a detention center that he compared favorably to a Nazi concentration camp.

The president’s former top strategist, Steve Bannon, also has well-established ties to white supremacists, having served as the executive director of Breitbart News both before and after his work with Trump.

Hill later deleted the tweet and clarified that the views she had expressed were her own and not her employer’s; ESPN said Thursday it had accepted her apology. But that didn’t stop Trump from wading into the controversy and demanding an apology from ESPN in an early-morning missive on Friday.

A number of well-known Trump critics spoke out in solidarity with Hill—and challenged the White House to call for their dismissal as well.

The campaign picked up speed following Trump’s statement on Thursday in which he repeated his views on the violence in Charlottesville, saying that there were “some pretty bad dudes” among the anti-racism counter-protesters. Everyday Americans began using the #NaziBucketChallenge hashtag, making it clear that Trump’s white supremacist views have been noticed by people of all races, religions, socioeconomic backgrounds, and genders.


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