The Base is a white nationalist terror group that made the news when three of its members were arrested and accused of planning to start a civil war at this week's gun rally in Virginia by murdering cops and opening fire on the pro-gun protesters. Read the rest

A British man was sentenced to indefinite detention, according to the BBC, after having been caught on camera attempting to burn down a synagogue and instead burning down himself. [Via Charles Stross]

When police arrested him at his Alexander Terrace home he had burns to his hands, forehead and hair and was carrying two lock knives and two lighters. As he was put in a police van, Morgan said: "Please tell me that synagogue is burning to the ground. If not, it's poor preparation."

The court heard the attack on the building coincided with a Jewish feast[sic] day commemorating disasters, including the Holocaust. The repairs totalled more than £23,000. Judge Anthony Leonard QC handed Morgan a hospital order without limit of time, saying most people would feel "anger and revulsion" for what he did.

President of the synagogue, Mr Richard Halsey, thanked the police for their "brilliant response" and "support".

The video is like a Looney Tunes cartoon, a true "Instant Karma" classic. Read the rest

Long before 4chan and other anything-goes forums existed, every major online community had a similar community: the Well had its "weird" forum, Usenet had alt.syntax.tactical (among others), and Something Awful had the "Fuck You and Die" forum, where people were funny, mean, obscene, and gross, sometimes all at once. Read the rest

Granted anonymity somewhere along the line from shutter to public exposure, cadets in the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation's basic training program offer the camera a Nazi salute in a photo that emerged earlier this month. Two academy trainers and one cadet have already lost their jobs; the state's governer says he wants the whole class fired. [ht Thom]

A third staff member who failed to report the contents of the photograph will also be fired, bringing the total number of staff terminations to three. Additionally, four academy instructors who are known to have seen the picture and failed to report it will also be suspended without pay.

In the image, nearly all members of the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation Basic Training Class #18 — 31 cadets — are giving what appears to be a Nazi salute. The others are posing with a clenched fist in the air.

I count five closed fists among the Nazi saluters. Read the rest

“Officials are not currently calling the act a hate crime, referring to it instead as an act of vandalism and tagging.”

“At least five” spray-painted swastikas were discovered on Tuesday morning in a residential area in Wrightwood, said the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department on Wednesday. Read the rest

An Italian police raid of 19 homes of members of the Italian National Socialist Workers' Party uncovered troves of weapons, Nazi literature, and books about Hitler and Mussolini. "The self-styled party aimed to form a pan-European alliance with other xenophobic and anti-Semitic groups, police said, without revealing how many people had joined it. Tne suspect allegedly had links with the 'Ndrangheta criminal network while another, a 50-year-old woman, called herself Hitler's sergeant-major." (Thanks, Kathy Padilla!) Read the rest

Elizabeth Warren has released a characteristically detailed campaign plan to counter white nationalist violence in the USA, whose multi-pronged approach includes directing the DoJ to be more vigorous in pursuing white nationalist groups (and to lay off the Cointelpro-style surveillance of groups that advocate for protections for racialized people); centralized data collection on white nationalist violence; FBI assistance in local investigations of white nationalist groups; global collaboration to disrupt international white terrorist organizations; purges of Nazis in the US military; using background checks to deny firearms to members and supporters of violent white nationalist groups; reforming school curriculum to head off white nationalist trends; creating an interagency task-force to combat white nationalism; and to "combat violent extremist content on the Internet in a manner consistent with freedom of expression" (a neat trick if she can manage it). Read the rest

On Halloween, a child at Creekside Elementary School in Kaysville, Utah wore a Nazi uniform as his costume for a parade at school. After some people complained online, the school principal and a teacher were suspended with pay for allowing such a thing. I wish they could suspend the boy's parents from being parents. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, "others (on social media) supported the boy." From the Salt Lake Tribune:

In a statement, the Davis County School District apologized for the costume.

“[The district] does not tolerate speech, images or conduct that portray or promote hate in any form,” the statement read. “The district is taking the matter very seriously and is investigating every aspect of the situation.”

School district spokesman Chris Williams declined to name the faculty members who were placed on paid leave, but the elementary school’s website lists Steve B. Hammer as the principal.

Richard Spencer sought to cast his brand of clean-cut ethnic nationalism as a respectable conservative alternative to nazism, coining the term "alt-right" to refer to it and successfully attracting mainstream media interest. In this audio recording, posted Sunday by provocateur Milo Yiannopoulous and claimed to be of Spencer, a man is heard ranting about Jews and black people in a more traditionally far-right mode. The recording is NSFW and contains terms of racial abuse.

“My ancestors fucking enslaved those little pieces of fucking shit,” Spencer is heard shouting on the recording. “They don’t do this to fucking me. We’re going to fucking ritualistically humiliate them.”

“Little fucking kikes,” Spencer is heard screaming in a terrifying minute-long rant. “They get ruled by people like me. Little fucking octaroons.”.

Yiannopoulous claims the recording was made in the immediate aftermath of counterprotestor Heather Heyer's murder at the 2017 Charlottesville "Unite the Right" rally.

Mother Jones was the first to indulge Spencer's media plan ("Meet the dapper white nationalist who wins even if Trump loses") but even those appalled by the cosy coverage were unable to avoid the term "alt-right" for long.

Spencer's fame and media sympathy peaked after he was punched on video in 2017 by a protestor, an event that led to much sanctimonious punditry at the dangerous incivility of "punching Nazis". Heyer's killing by another white nationalist sobered up the poseurs and Spencer's media star quickly fell. Now no-one can be in any doubt about how low it always should have been. Read the rest

Ingvar Kamprad founded Ikea and invented some of the modern tax-evasion playbook, while amassing billions; despite this, he is lionized both in Sweden and abroad for his quirky frugality and the ubiquity of his stores and their products. Read the rest

Just another day living under our very normal white supremacist government. Justice Department officials reportedly emailed immigration judges a white nationalist blog post that included various attacks on Jewish people. Read the rest

The Daily Beast reports that a water polo team from a California high school sang Nazi songs during an awards ceremony. Read the rest

In Ohio, a racist 20-year-old man was arrested over the weekend for threatening to attack a Jewish community center, in a post on Instagram. Read the rest

In October 2018, Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes was invited to speak at the Manhattan Republican club, drawing neo-Nazi supporters and antifa protesters; Proud Boy thugs waded into the protest and began indiscriminately attacking the protesters. Read the rest

The Southern Poverty Law Center's Hatewatch makes a compelling case linking US Bureau of Energy Resources foreign affairs officer Matthew Q. Gebert with a series of violent white nationalist identities that have advocated acts of terror within in the USA and have been involved with recruiting for and promoting white nationalist terror organizations. Read the rest

RJ Jones writes, "My friend gave me a tip! If you need to drown out fascists, bring a speaker & play copyrighted music at their rallies cause it will be easy to report their videos & get them taken down for copyright." Read the rest

J Michael Straczynski (previously) is known for many things: creating Babylon 5, spectacular runs on flagship comics from Spiderman to Superman, incredibly innovative and weird kids' TV shows like The Real Ghostbusters, and megahits like Sense8; in the industry he's known as a writing machine, the kind of guy who can write and produce 22 hours of TV in a single season, and he's also known as a mensch, whose online outreach to fans during the Babylon 5 years set the bar for how creators and audiences can work together to convince studios to take real chances. But in JMS's new memoir, Becoming Superman: My Journey From Poverty to Hollywood, we get a look at a real-life history that is by turns horrific and terrifying, and a first-person account of superhuman perseverance and commitment to the right thing that, incredibly, leads to triumph Read the rest