Governor Thomas Johnson High School in Frederick, Maryland, sported new colors during a recent basketball game: the Nazi Swastika. School officials have apologized for the flag, hung in plain sight in a school window, and promised to find out who put it there.
Serenity Bush Moore:
Last night at one of the biggest games in FCPS, Thomas Johnson High School had this hateful flag prominently displayed in the window in the front of the school where everyone entered! As a graduate of FCPS, I am so regularly disappointed by their poor decisions. The idea that a school system has made a decision to exist in the destructiveness and incapacity dimensions of the cultural continuum demonstrates a total inability to protect all students. Please miss me with it’s a social studies class. What culturally proficient educator has a “life” size Nazi flag in their tool kit and then has the audacity to hang it OVER THEIR CLASSROOM WINDOW IN THE FRONT OF THE SCHOOL BUILDING BY THE MAIN ENTRANCE. Staff and administrative parking is directly in front of this window, so this was seen by a school leader. Irresponsibility and privilege at its highest levels.
You just never know when it's time for a WWII history class in America. Read the rest
“Not only is the terror threat diverse, it’s unrelenting."
--FBI director Chris Wray.
The FBI has elevated the risk from neo-Nazis in America to the same level with which it regards ISIS. Read the rest
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.
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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.
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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!)
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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
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.
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