Racist Hate Group To Conduct Nighttime Patrols On College Campus

By Scott Keyes/Think Progress
A racist hate group at Towson University has announced plans to conduct its own nighttime police patrols on campus.

Founded last year, the White Student Union has stirred significant controversy already. The organization has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. In addition, its founder, Matthew Heimbach (who goes by the title “Commander Heimbach”), and fellow organizer Scott Terry interrupted a minority outreach panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference this month in order to defend slavery, noting that slaveholders provided blacks with food and shelter. Terry later told ThinkProgress that African-Americans “should be allowed to vote in Africa” and he’d be “fine” living in a society where blacks are permanently subservient to whites.

The Towerlight has more on the vigilante plan:

The controversial White Student Union has resurfaced on Towson’s campus with plans to conduct random nighttime patrols, which members say are for students’ protection.

Some members of the group, equipped with flashlights, will conduct on-campus safety walks, and female members will carry pepper spray in an attempt to protect students from various crimes like sexual assaults and robberies, WSU President Matthew Heimbach said. [...]

Heimbach said female members have also been enrolling in self-defense classes, and members have been going to local gun ranges as a group, but not in a “military way,” Heimbach said.

He said group members would carry no weapons on the nighttime walks.

One need look no further than the White Student Union’s blog to see why their vigilante operations could turn problematic. In a blog post last month entitled “Black Crime Wave Continues!“, the group writes:

The frequent robberies, sexual assaults, and acts of vandalism at Towson University are not often reported in the local media. For those who are not Towson students it seems hard to fathom that every single day black predators prey upon the majority white Towson University student body. White Southern men have long been called to defend their communities when law enforcement and the State seem unwilling to protect our people.

As a result, the post reads, “The WSU executive board has unanimously approved to make it mandatory for all female WSU members to begin taking some form of unarmed self defense training over the next month.”

Though no Towson faculty would sign on as a sponsor for the WSU, the administration allows the group to use university resources. As the group bragged in September 2012, it is “excited to report that it has taken one step closer toward becoming recognized by Towson University,” pointing to its profile on a university website.

Number Of Radical Anti-Government Groups ‘Reached An All-Time High’ In 2012, Report Finds

By Ben Armbruster/Think Progress

The Southern Poverty Law Center released a new report on Tuesday finding that “the number of conspiracy-minded antigovernment ‘Patriot’ groups reached an all-time high of 1,360 in 2012″ and that the number of hate groups has remained at “near record levels” of more than 1,000. The group is calling on the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security to increase the amount of resources devoted to tracking and combatting domestic radical anti-government groups.

The SPLC says the number of “Patriot” groups (of which, 321 are militia groups) is up 7 percent from 2011 and up an incredible 813 percent since 2009. (The SPLC defines Patriot groups being comprised of conspiracy theory-minded individuals who believe the federal government is run by secret “globalists” aimed at taking away American freedoms and establishing a global world order based on socialist principles; and defines a Militia group as a paramilitary wing of the former.)

“These numbers far exceed the movement’s peak in the 1990s, when militias were inflamed by the 1993 Brady Bill and the 1994 assault rifle ban,” an SPLC press release states.

SPLC Senior Fellow and lead author of the report Mark Potok said there are two main reasons why the numbers of Patriot and militia groups have skyrocketed since 2009: the election of the nation’s first black president, Barack Obama (which includes the coinciding nation-widedemographic changes) and fears compounded by the economic crisis and the mainstreaming ofconspiracy theories. Adding fuel to the fire, Potok said in a press call on Tuesday, is Obama’s reelection and the debate on gun regulation after the shooting massacre in Newtown, CT in January.

“This is the fourth straight year of really explosive growth of Patriot and militia groups,” Potok said. “We’ve never seen this kind of growth in any group that we cover.”

SPLC President J. Richard Cohen sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano asking that their departments increase resources to combat the problem.

“In January,” the letter says, “a former Tennessee police chief who conducts weapons training for law enforcement threatened in a video posted on YouTube to ‘start killing people’ if President Obama uses his executive power to enact gun control measures.” Cohen adds that “the resources devoted to countering domestic hate and radical antigovernment groups and those they may inspire do not appear commensurate with the threat.”

Indeed, DHS stripped down its domestic terrorism unit after Napolitano ordered a 2009 report on domestic right-wing extremism withdrawn because of significant political backlash from mainstream conservatives.

Daryl Johnson, the 2009 DHS report’s lead author who subsequently wrote a book chronicling his experience at DHS and its lack of focus on domestic extremists, said on Tuesday in light of SPLC’s new report that he “can’t imagine what it will take for DHS to recognize this growing and dangerous threat within the homeland,” adding that the report “should raise a red flag and cause concern.”

“As in the period before the Oklahoma City bombing, we now are seeing ominous threats from those who believe that the government is poised to take their guns,” Cohen said in the SPLC’s press release, which adds: “In October 1994, the SPLC wrote to then-Attorney General Janet Reno about the growing threat of domestic extremism; the Okla- homa City federal building was bombed six months later in the country’s deadliest act of domestic terrorism.”

Muslim group bans Daily Caller from event for being a ‘hate group’

By David Edwards/Raw Story

Tucker Carlson’s website The Daily Caller reported on Wednesday that a Muslim civil liberties advocacy organization had blocked them from attending a news conference, labeling the conservative outlet a “hate group.”

According to The Daily Caller’s Vince Coglianese, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) had scheduled the event to respond to recent attacks on U.S. embassies in Egypt and Libya.

But after reviewing the reporter’s credentials, the CAIR communication director Ibrahim Hooper refused to let them join.

“The Daily Caller is not a news outlet, it is a hate group,” Hooper allegedly said. “You cannot come in.”

“We have any number of press people. In fact, we often have press people who are highly critical, or ask tough questions. But people who report for propagandist, anti-Muslim hate sites are not journalists,” he added, according to the report.

Earlier this year, The Daily Caller published two op-eds by a retired Army major general who had falsely suggested that President Barack Obama might be a Muslim. The outlet also published a column by former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), who implied that there was a sinister relationship between Gov. Rick Perry (R) and the Muslim community in Texas.

Coglianese argued that the CAIR spokesperson took issue with opinion pieces published by The Daily Caller, not the site’s reporting.

Fox News allows hate group to participate in GOP debate

By David Edwards/Raw Story

Almost 20,000 questions were submitted for Thursday night’s Republican presidential debate, but Fox News picked the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a designated hate group, to ask the first question on immigration.

“Struggling U.S. workers continue to compete with millions of illegal aliens,” FAIR’s Kristen Williamson claimed in her video question. “Do you support legislation to require all employers to use e-verify in order to ensure that the people that they hire are actually legally authorized to work in the U.S.?”

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich replied by saying that the country would be better off if the e-verify program was outsourced to private credit card companies.

Although FAIR has testified to Congress more than 30 times, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) considers them to be a hate group.

“The identification of FAIR as a bona fide hate group is important,” SPLC’s Mark Potok wrote in 2007. “FAIR is the hub of the American nativist movement, the group that more than any other has contributed to the rancid turn the national immigration discussion has taken. With FAIR fanning the flames of xenophobic intolerance, hate groups, hate crimes and hate speech directed at foreigners and Latinos continue to rise in America.”

Watch this video from Fox News, broadcast Sept. 22, 2011.

John Birch Society Celebrates Koch Family For Their Role In Founding The Hate Group

By Lee Fang

Billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch have been dominant financiers for conservative front groups and nonprofits for nearly three decades. Their money has flowed to organizations dedicated to lobbying for corporate and upper income tax cuts, as well as to groups responsible for mobilizing Tea Party rallies against President Obama. But the Koch family’s association with fringe right-wing groups began a generation earlier with Fred Koch, the patriarch of the clan.

Fred not only founded the company now known as Koch Industries, he also was afounding member of the John Birch Society. As a founding board member, Fred helped engineer a hysterical wave of attacks on labor, intellectuals, public education, liberal clergy members, and other pillars of society he viewed as a threat. Birchers decriedeveryone from former President Eisenhower to water utility administrators as pawns in a global communist conspiracy. In the last two years, as the Koch name has becomesynonymous with right-wing plutocracy in the United States, the Koch family has played down its relation to the Birchers.

However, the New American, the official mouthpiece of the John Birch Society, published a piece this morning celebrating Fred and the Koch family’s pivotal role in developing the group:

Koch warned that American institutions were honeycombed with communist subversives, from labor unions and tax-free foundations to universities and churches. Art and newsprint, radio and television — all these media had been transmuted into vehicles of communist propaganda. [...] Fred Koch was no fly-by-night pamphleteer. He spent a generous portion of his later years using his wealth and influence to fight the communism he abhorred. He was an early member of the The John Birch Society’s National Council, an advisory group to JBS founder Robert Welch. Koch supported a variety of freedom-related causes, all the while continuing to build the company today known as Koch Industries.

The Bircher ode to Koch glosses over Fred’s record of bigotry. In a booklet he authored, Fred railed against civil rights leaders, and claimed the movement against racial segregation was a communist plot to use African Americans to destabilize the country. The Koch-funded Birchers held numerous rallies during the ’60s claiming integration would lead to a “mongrelization” of the races.

Although the present-day Koch brothers try to eschew explicit racism, their top Tea Party front group, Americans for Prosperity, is currently pursuing similar racial segregation goals. In North Carolina, the Americans for Prosperity chapter led a campaign to end a highly successful public school integration system.

Christian Hate Group ‘Repent Amarillo’ Terrorizes Texas Town, Harassing Gays, Liberals, And Other ‘Sinners’

By Lee Fang

An evangelical Christian hate group called “Repent Amarillo” is reportedly terrorizing the town of Amarillo, Texas. Repent fashions itself as a sort of militia and targets a wide range of community members they deem offensive to their theology: gays, liberal Christians, Muslims, environmentalists, breast cancer events that do not highlight abortion, Halloween, “spring break events,” and pornography shops. On its website, Repent has posted a “Warfare Map” of its enemies in town.

Calling Repent an “American Taliban,” blogger Charles Johnson notes that the group’s moniker “Army of God” is a rough translation of “Hezbollah.” Led by a man named David Grisham, a security guard at a nuclear-bomb facility called Pantex, Repent first gained media attention in Texas following a campaign to boycott Houston for electing a gay mayor. The group, which is associated with Raven Ministries, collaborates with other Christian groups as well as forced pregnancy advocacy associations like “Bound 4 Life.”

According to a new exposé by the Texas Observer, Repent set out earlier this year to destroy a discreet club of swingers they discovered in town. On New Years eve, the harassment began, with Repent members, almost exclusively young men, showing up in military fatigues and bullhorns, blaring Christian music at the swingers’ club building. The swingers, made up of “regulars” of middle aged, working class couples, were then stalked at every following visit to the club. Repent not only took video of each member, but obtained the swingers’ license plates and dug through their trash, informing neighbors and coworkers of what was once private. Watch a Texas Observer report:

Repent has struck with some success at many of its enemies within the town. A community theater attempted to open “Bent,” a play about the persecution of homosexuals during Nazi Germany. But the day before opening night, Repent members helped shut down the play by calling in fire marshals to complain about the theater’s permit. Staffers at a nature preserve were featured on local news defending themselves against Repent accusations that their site represents something related to witchcraft.

But grassroots opposition to Repent is also building. A group called “Angel Action” has mobilized against Repent, and blogs and Amarillo-based Facebook groups are springing up to protest Repent’s hate.

Dobbs Brushes Off Blame For Inspiring Rise In Right-Wing Anti-Immigrant Extremism

By Andrea Nill

Explaining the alarming rise in extremist group activity in 2009, Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) pinned some blame on former CNN anchor Lou Dobbs, Fox News host Glenn Beck, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), and former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK). Dobbs hit back at the group by referring to Potok as “paranoid.” ABC News reports:

Potok cited talk-show host Glenn Beck for stoking fears that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is running concentration camps, former CNN host Lou Dobbs for incurring fears about supposed Mexican plots to take over the southwestern U.S., Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., for making statements about secret political reeducation camps, and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin for referring to Obama “death panels” during the health care debate. Bachmann and Beck are also cited by name in the SPLC’s report, but Dobbs and Palin are not.

“These people help to bring completely groundless conspiracy theories from the margins into the mainstream,” said Potok. In a phone interview, Dobbs scoffed at the report. “It’s sad that Mr. Potok insists upon maintaining his paranoia, and I hope that he recovers.” “Beyond that, I have nothing to say about the man,” said Dobbs.

SPLC isn’t the only group that has accused Dobbs of fueling a rise in anti-immigrant hate. Last June, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund released a report that revealed a close correlation between the increasingly volatile immigration debate and a growing number of hate crimes against Latinos and “perceived immigrants.” The report specifically cited Dobbs’ “shrill anti-immigration reform commentaries.” When Dobbs was still on air, Media Matters wrote that Dobbs, along with Beck and Bill O’Reilly, served a “steady diet of fear, anger, and resentment on the topic of illegal immigration.” Dobbs was described as “the one most obsessed with the topic” and was accused of having “hosted some of the most radical immigration opponents, offering them a national platform to disseminate extremist views.” While campaigning in 2008, Obama himself accused Dobbs of “ginning things up” to such an extent that hate crimes against Latinos soared.

Dobbs’ fiery rhetoric has also been directed at opposing the Obama administration. Soon after his departure from CNN, Dobbs announced on his radio show that if health care reform comes close to passing, “we’re going to have to do something quite different” and advised his listeners to “protest physically and visibly in the streets.” Last year, Dobbs also dismissed a report released by the Department of Homeland Security warning about a rise in right-wing extremism as a document similar to those produced in China under Mao Zedong’s oppressive rule.

M.C.L comment: Let the great right wing back peddling begin, idiots like Beck,Palin, Dobbs and Bachmann love to incite these people for their own political or ideological purpose. And once these people act out in violence people like Beck or Dobbs will simply guide their followers to the closet speeding Greyhound bus and let the bus steam rolls them and act like they didn't know where these people get these ideas from even though if check these people viewing or listening habits you see where they get their ideas from.

Example remember when that shooter in Tennessee shot up that church he viewed as liberal? In his letter he wrote the reason he did was he wanted to kill every Democrat in Washington and every one listed in Bernie Goldberg's book. The Holocaust museum was big fan of Glenn Beck and the far right wing web site Free Republic, the guy who shot and killed those police officers in Pennsylvania was also a Glenn Beck fanboy. And according to Lou Dobbs if it snow 10 feet somewhere it was because there were too many illegal Mexicans.

New report finds that right-wing extremist groups have grown 244 percent in the past year.

By Zaid Jilani A new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center has unearthed shocking data about the rise of militias, antigovernment groups, and other right-wing extremist groups. The report, titled “Rage on the Right,” has found that there has been an increase of 244 percent in the number of these extremist groups in 2009:

The number of extremist groups in the United States exploded in 2009 as militias and other groups steeped in wild, antigovernment conspiracy theories exploited populist anger across the country and infiltrated the mainstream, according to a report issued today by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Antigovernment “Patriot” groups – militias and other extremist organizations that see the federal government as their enemy – came roaring back to life over the past year after more than a decade out of the limelight.

The SPLC documented a 244 percent increase in the number of active Patriot groups in 2009. Their numbers grew from 149 groups in 2008 to 512 groups in 2009, an astonishing addition of 363 new groups in a single year. Militias – the paramilitary arm of the Patriot movement – were a major part of the increase, growing from 42 militias in 2008 to 127 in 2009.

Early last year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) warned about the rise of “rightwing extremism in the United States,” sparking an uproar among many on the right who derided DHS’s warning as merely “paranoid accusations of liberal bloggers.