The scourge of hate

Terrible news tonight out of Chicago:

Judge's husband, mother found dead

The federal judge whom white supremacist Matthew Hale attempted to have murdered found her husband and mother lying dead in her house when she returned home Monday night, police said.

Judge Joan H. Lefkow returned to her house in the 5200 block of North Lakewood Avenue after work and found the bodies of her husband, attorney Michael F. Lefkow and her mother, Donna Humphrey, lying in blood in the house, police said.

Detectives, U.S. Marshals and FBI agents rushed to the scene and were investigating the deaths as a "death investigation," police said. Other family members may also have been present when the bodies were discovered, neighbors said.

Police sources were cautious about describing the deaths Monday night, and said it was too early to say how the victims were killed.

As the story explains, Matt Hale remains in prison after bring convicted for attempting to hire someone to kill Judge Lefkow. He's scheduled to be sentenced in April.

I've posted quite a bit about Hale's saga, including a note when he was first arrested here. What's been noteworthy, of course, is that even before his arrest -- but especially in its wake -- his little World Church of the Creator fiefdom has been crumbling dramatically.

However, as I've also pointed out, these groups can remain lethal even in their death throes. Sadly, this appears to have been the case with Judge Lefkow's family.

Masters of war

So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.

I couldn't help but utter a low mordant chuckle when I heard George W. Bush speak these words in his inauguration speech, and repeat the call for "ending tyranny in our world" in his State of the Union address.

Because the history of the Bush family -- including the current White House occupants, and the power cadre they have gathered -- tells us a little about just how W. defines "tyranny." It's all in the eye of the beholder.

This was driven home recently by news of the recent war-related windfall that just happened to befall W's own Uncle Bucky Bush:

William H.T. "Bucky" Bush, uncle of the president and youngest brother of former President George H.W. Bush, cashed in ESSI stock options last month with a net value of nearly half a million dollars.

"Uncle Bucky," as he is known to the president, is on the board of the company, which supplies armor and other materials to U.S. troops. The company's stock prices have soared to record heights since before the invasion, benefiting in part from contracts to rapidly refit fleets of military vehicles with extra armor.

William Bush exercised options on 8,438 shares of company stock Jan. 18, according to reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He acknowledged in an interview that the transaction was worth about $450,000.

In an earnings report issued Tuesday, the firm disclosed that net earnings for the first quarter ending Jan. 31 reached a record $20.6 million, while quarterly revenue hit $233.5 million, up 20% from a year ago. As a result, the company boosted its projected annual revenue to between $990 million and $1 billion.

None of this should come as a surprise, really. This is the world of the Bush family, after all.

The Bush family fortune, you see, was built on making steel castings, primarily for two of the linchpins of industrial society: railroads and armaments. Bush's grandfather, Samuel Prescott Bush, ran an Ohio manufacturing firm called Buckeye Steel Castings. The Bushes had many business and family connections to other giants of industry who were often business partners, including the Harriman family of Union Pacific Railroad, and the arms-making Remington family. Sam Bush was also director of small armaments and ammunition on the federal War Industries Board board between 1918 and 1924, which made him responsible for government assistance to arms makers like Remington, whose owner, Frank Rockefeller, was a former Buckeye Steel company president. Bush also oversaw the takeover of numerous small arms manufacturers and the cartelization of the industry.

As I've described in detail previously, the Bushes -- Samuel Bush as well as his son Prescott -- had little compunction about doing business with tyrants, particularly the rapidly rising Nazi regime of Germany in the 1930s. Indeed, Prescott Bush appears to have continued doing business with the Nazis, for a while at least, even after America went to war with them.

The problem with all this, as I explained then, is not that the Bush family has Nazi ties (it doesn't) or that the family fortune is built with Nazi money (which is arguable). The problem is that this way of running the world -- of doing business with and propping up murderers and tyrants so long as they're "on our side" -- has remained with us, and plagues us, to this day:

This really is why the questions around the Bush family's connections to the Nazi regime are relevant today. The episode does not point to some secret ideological affinity for fascism so much as it reveals a willingness to empower them if it furthers their ends. The really interesting question raised by the "Bush-Nazi connection" is not so much a hidden skeleton in the family closet as what the episode says about American society's willingness to ignore inconvenient truths of history, and how that affects the ethos of current public policy.

Cecil Adams, in his attempt to debunk the connection, alludes to this when he argues:

So, did Bush and his firm finance the Nazis and enable Germany to rearm? Indirectly, yes. But they had a lot of company. Some of the most distinguished names in American business had investments or subsidiaries in prewar Germany, including Standard Oil and General Motors. Critics have argued for years that without U.S. money, the Nazis could never have waged war.

While this is quite accurate as far it goes, for some reason, Adams considers this an excuse of some kind: "Hey, everybody did it, and we still do it." This elides the larger question of the real moral culpability that exists for aiding and abetting not just the Nazi nightmare, but violent totalitarian regimes through succeeding years. While it is true that certain American figures -- notably Henry Ford -- faced even greater degrees of culpability for their overt support of fascism, the people who gladly profited from providing essential cogs to the Nazi war machine cannot escape accountability by merely claiming that it was "just business." This defense for all kinds of atrocities is common among American capitalists, and it is at base corrupt and amoral. Indeed, it continues to serve as a handy excuse for the kind of foreign policy that has been practiced ever since the war, and which was specifically shaped by the same self-interested forces that gave way to the Holocaust.

Two other texts -- both balanced, accurate and reliable -- have tackled the larger issue of the role of corporate America's investment in and financial and logistical support for the Nazis, both in their nascent and military-building phases: New York Times reporter Charles Higham's groundbreaking 1983 book, Trading With The Enemy; The Nazi American Money Plot 1933-1949, and Christopher Simpson's 1993 The Splendid Blond Beast: Money Law and Genocide in the Twentieth Century.

Both books -- which deal at least tangentially with the Harriman-Bush connections -- focused on the question of why these captains of industry never had to confront their culpability in the Nazi nightmare. According to Higham, investigations were begun by international tribunals to look into this matter but "the government smothered everything during and even after the war." Higham contended that government officials believed "a public scandal ... would have drastically affected public morale, caused widespread strikes and perhaps provoked mutinies in the armed services," and thought "their trial and imprisonment would have made it impossible for the corporate boards to help the American war effort."

Simpson delves even deeper into this point and ultimately concludes that when it came time for accountability in the mass genocide sponsored by corporatists, international tribunals were stymied by the same machinations of privilege and power that were in fact responsible for the problem. The elites whose fortunes were at stake found that the structure of international law was weak and easily manipulated so that they could simply "get on with business."

In a followup post, I discussed this point further:

This legacy has two dimensions that that need reckoning: domestic and international.

-- The willingness of elite capitalists to sponsor the activities of the thuggish elements that are intrinsically a major component of fascism as a bulwark against "leftists" has never left us entirely. Indeed, it has been occurring with renewed vigor since the early 1990s, when the conservative-movement dogmatists decided that Bill Clinton was a major threat to their drive for power, and began forming alliances with proto-fascist elements, specifically transmitting their ideas and agendas into mainstream conservatism. (This is, of course, the primary subject of "Rush, Newspeak and Fascism.")

That propensity has been rising to the surface in increasing numbers with the George W. Bush regime, which deployed thuggish elements in the Florida debacle in 2000 and turned them loose against antiwar protesters in 2002-03. The levels of violence and thuggery have remained subdued so far, but a serious challenge to Bush's power in the 2004 elections may well raise it another notch. In any event, the willingness to form these alliances dates can be traced directly back to the behavior of such capitalists as Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker in the 1930s.

-- The willingness to do business with, and indeed sponsor and arm, brutish thugs, dictators and continues to affect us today. After all, Iraq's Saddam Hussein was precisely the kind of dictator that America has historically armed and backed as an "enemy of our enemies" over the years since World War II, only to have them turn on us as a genuine threat themselves. For that matter, the terrorists who now operate Al Qaeda were originally sponsored by Americans in Afghanistan as part of our effort to undermine the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

Not that we have ever learned anything from this: Today, in the name of defeating Al Qaeda and Saddam in the "war on terror," we have allied ourselves with all kinds of reprehensible thugs and authoritarian regimes, including those in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, China, and Malaysia.

A couple of weeks ago, Parade Magazine -- not exactly a hotbed of liberalism -- ran a feature titled "The World's 10 Worst Dictators". It apparently was predicated on taking seriously Mr. Bush's charge for ridding the world of tyranny in our time. But it was a very interesting list, since it included some of our chief allies in the "war on terror," as well as governments with whom we have remained at least somewhat cozy.

Included on the list:

-- Than Shwe of Burma. Burma: Even though the brutal military dictatorship of Myanmar has come under more scrutiny and criticism from the Bush administration recently, it was worth noting that Bush's Justice Department undertook a legal effort supporting Unocal's campaign to avoid legal and fiduciary consequences for underwriting and encouraging government brutality -- including murder and concentration camps -- to get a pipeline built in Myanmar.

-- Hu Jintao of China. Hu is only the leading figure of a government by cabal that has held the largest number of people in the grasp of tyranny for the longest period of time in history. As I've argued previously, China's government fits the definition of a threat as well as any nation on the planet: they have weapons of mass destruction; they torture and brutalize their own people, oppressing them through police-state tactics; they invade their neighbors and are a regional military threat; and they have engaged in military confrontations with American forces. But we do billions of dollars in business with China every year, and they are proclaimed a valued ally in the "war on terror" (which China has used, of course, as a pretext for suppressing regional dissent).

-- Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. The connections between the Saudis and the Bush family are almost too numerous to catalog, but Craig Unger's remarkable work in House of Bush, House of Saud is a good place to start.

-- Pervez Musharaff of Pakistan. Of course, Musharaff is now one of our prominent allies in the "war on terror," though it's hard to say why. After all, our own State Department reported before 9/11 on Musharaff's many connections to various terrorist factions, including Al Qaeda. Most significant were the many connections within the Pakistani intelligence agency (ISI) to Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

-- Saparmurat Niyazov, Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan is also an ally in the "war on terror." The Bush administration turned down multiple pleas (including a recommendation by a federal commission) to designate both Turkmenistan and Saudi Arabia as "countries of particular concern" regarding their handling of religious freedoms and human rights. That couldn't have had anything to do, I'm sure, with that pipeline they're planning to build through Turkmenistan. Nah.

So how, exactly, are we going to "end tyranny in our world" when some of the biggest tyrants are some of this administration's closest allies? How can we take such talk seriously when it's clear there are a lot hidden agendas involved in deciding just who is the tyrant du jour?

And if anyone has been deluded into thinking it's peace that this administration wants, they should think, for just a moment, on how people like "Uncle Bucky" make their fortunes in this world. Because those folks are running the show now.

[Originally published Sunday at The American Street.]

Hate hath no bounds

A trend I've increasingly been reporting on is the seemingly emboldened white supremacist movement, particularly the way it is targeting teens for recruitment.

One of the predictable corollaries of this trend is that, increasingly, minority youngsters will be the targets of these haters.

Two reports out of California make clear that white-power hate groups have no boundaries when it comes to who they'll target. Even little kids. Of course, I've known this for some time; I remember how Keith Gilbert of the Aryan Nations used to harass a mixed-race family in Coeur d'Alene.

The most recent report involved threats against Indian teens on the Paiute Reservation in northeastern California, as Indian Country Today reported:

BISHOP, Calif. - Shock, fear and anger rocked the Bishop Paiute reservation recently when letters left at the tribe's education complex threatened to "kidnap, rape and dismember" young Paiute girls, aged 5 to 9.

Three original letters, typed in red ink with a cover sheet signed ''KKK,'' were left at the tribe's gymnasium and on the baseball field adjacent to the tribe's Head Start program and daycare center. Other copies were tossed on nearby roadsides, according to the tribe's chief of law enforcement services, Cal Stafford.

The letters sparked a firestorm of outrage and anxiety on the reservation and in the surrounding city of Bishop, a small rustic town in the Sierra Nevadas.

Addressed to the Paiute tribe, the letters promised retaliation for ''your half-witted bucks taking another white life'' and alluded to crimes involving tribal members dating back a decade. The letters were turned over to the Inyo County Sheriff's office, which notified the FBI.

"This is a terrorist threat," said Bishop Paiute Vice Chairman Sandra Warlie, who spearheaded efforts to inform and protect tribal members. "Whoever did this meant to put fear in our hearts by targeting our children. We are stepping up security measures and we will do everything we can to protect our people."

The threats are believed to be retribution for the death of a white liquor store manager, Dave Pettet, 48, who was allegedly shot by tribal member Wayne Bengochia in an alcohol-related incident four days before the letters were found. Begochia, 48, was charged with homicide and is awaiting trial.

The problem is that these events are not "isolated incidents" that are occurring in a vacuum. They're occurring in a context in which open hostility to Native Americans -- embodied in Gov. Arnold Schwarzengger's remarks that Indians were "ripping us off" -- are becoming part of the public dialogue. As Indian Country Today's editors put it:

Radio's hate-talkers agitate the masses with euphemistic language, charging at the ''multi-culturalists'' (or as Rush Limbaugh puts it, the ''diversity crowd'') when they really mean the non-mainstream, when their anger is actually directed at the non-white (and white) people who still understand the nature of racism. In some cases, politicians join in the game by chastising whole groups while attacking on a given issue. (Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's infamous characterization of Indians as thieves in his perhaps careless phrase ''The Indians are ripping us off'' is a case in point.) The intent of this hardball game is, of course, to score on the opponent, to pound the other guy into submission.

It is mostly just a game for Schwarzenegger and for most media hounds and politicians who play it, but it is a game that can have serious consequences for communities.

Meanwhile, in the Santa Clarita Valley, haters are targeting little kids too:

The valley has been roiled over the last few months by claims from at least half a dozen African American families that their children have been targets of intolerant, even racist, behavior from their white peers. They say the white teens have continually bullied, harassed and attacked their children at school and off campus for no apparent reason, other than the color of their skin.

The attacks, they said, occurred when youths were walking home from school, going to the park or visiting friends. The incidents have shaken the community because the alleged assailants are not skin-head outsiders but other teenagers who live among them in the pricey subdivisions.

"I need to be making college plans for my kids, and instead I'm fighting this mess," said Valencia resident Robin Williams-Nohara, who says her three sons have been harassed and beaten by white teenagers. "I can't believe this is happening in L.A. County in 2005. No way."

Williams-Nohara is African American and works as an infant-care specialist in West Los Angeles. Her Japanese American husband, Seiji Nohara, is a customer service representative for United Airlines. They moved to Valencia from Monterey Park four years ago, hoping the good schools and suburban environment would help their children excel and go on to college.

At some point, California's political leadership is going to have to step to the forefront and take an aggressive stance against these crimes. The fact that they have not so far, in fact, may speak even more loudly.

Support your local orca

I've now compiled and edited "The Rise of Pseudo Fascism" -- my seven-part essay that ran from September to November of last year, and which recently won a 2004 Koufax Award for Best Series -- into a single document available on PDF.

This version has been edited somewhat, particularly in Part 7, to reflect the exigencies of the post-election environment, as I was writing it just as the election was about to take place. I've also added a brief, two-page Introduction.

You can obtain it by clicking here or on the link in the upper left-hand corner of the blog, right under the shot of the orca. I've also attached, underneath that, a PayPal button.

This is, you see, my sorta annual fund-raiser. I don't like holding out a tin cup, but I am happy to ask people to pitch in to support my work if I can offer them something in exchange. So download the PDF to your heart's content, and if you like what you read, pitch $5 -- or whatever you like -- into the kitty.

I promise not to head for the sticks like, ahem, certain bloggers we could name, a few months after this. I will keep Orcinus an ad-free environment -- not that this makes me purer or anything like that, but just because it simplifies things for me a great deal, especially from an ethical standpoint; my old-fashioned newsroom church-state separation instinct, I'll admit, plays a role in this.

It's also important that the blog not become too entangling, or then it won't be worth it for me personally. Still, I think Orcinus has real continuing value in keeping track of some of the darker impulses at play in our current landscape, and more importantly, getting the information circulated and examined. But I have another book-writing project coming up this summer (I'll blog about it as it gets closer), with a great deal of time spent on research, so I need to see what I can do to make sure the blog pays for the quantity of my time it will be consuming.

In that sense, consider this fund-raiser a chance to support independent journalism. Think of it, if you like, as a subscription of sorts, and donate accordingly.

I'm operating largely on my own these days, and the freedom to publish material like "Pseudo Fascism" or "Rush, Newspeak and Fascism" is in the end utterly dependent on your support. I remain pretty certain I could not have published these in anything approaching a "respectable" printed publication, though I'm grateful for the support of folks like those at Cursor who continue to support my work.

All of you have my thanks just for showing up. I'm flattered and honored to get as many visitors as I do daily. I'm hoping to keep up the quality of work you've become accustomed to (though I can't promise any more Koufaxes). Do what you can to pitch in.

Many thanks to Real Genius for doing all the PDF and footnoting work.

[For those who want to donate by snail mail, my address is: P.O. Box 17872, Seattle, WA, 98107.]

Blogging about

From hither and yon ...

Liberals in the Northwest have been behind the game in getting their mutual-support act together (yours truly is notably slow on this particular uptake), but the appearance of Pacific Northwest Portal is decidedly a step in the right, er, left direction. (Note that Orcinus is a regularly syndicated feature on the portal's Washington blogs page. I've also added a button at the bottom of my blogroll for easy access.)

Gil Smart weighs in on hateful right-wing rhetoric and the response by "reasonable" conservatives.

My old friend John McKay of archy has put together a great little project titled Carnival of Bad History, which sounds like a great opportunity for friends and readers from Is That Legal? and Cliopatra to pitch in.

Oh, yes: I have a post up at The American Street on our Masters of War. Enjoy.

Corrections Department

Two corrections worth noting from last week's post on the Washington state elections:

First, the paragraph I cited from the study by Carla at Preemptive Karma and Torrid Joe at Also Also indicating a higher rate of error in Spokane County was incorrect: Here is their correction. It's worth noting, though, that even though this particular piece of evidence was off, the thrust of their findings -- which was that the rate of error rises exponentially with population -- remains rock-solid.

Second, I incorrectly reported that both Carla and TJ had been banned from Sound Politics by Stefan Sharkansky, but Carla has never been banned there. I also reported that links to their sites had been banned, but that appears to be at least partly incorrect; I've spoken to three different people who said their links to Also Also were rejected in SP's comments, but if that policy was in place at one time, it seems to have been lifted; Sharkansky himself has linked to them in his response, and I've also been able to link to Also Also in SP's comments.

More commentary on this may be forthcoming.

Something to die for

Max Blumenthal has an excellent new piece up at Media Transparency titled "Air Jesus: With The Evangelical Air Force", describing the wonderful time he had covering the National Religious Broadcasters' convention in Anaheim.

The best part is near the end, when he describes an appearance by James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Dobson in fact makes a point rather similar to mine about the whole SpongeBob controversy:

One of few times Dobson spoke out of turn was to make a clarification he had apparently wanted to issue for some time. "I did not say SpongeBob was gay," Dobson told the crowd, responding to media ridicule of his attack on the popular cartoon character:

"All I said was he was part of a video produced by a group with strong linkages to the homosexual community that's teaching things like tolerance and diversity. And you can see where they're going with that. They're teaching kids to think different about homosexuality."

Yes, indeed they are. They're now teaching them that being a "faggot" isn't a license for getting beaten up. The horrors.

Equally interesting were the remarks by Dobson's heir-apparent, his son Ryan:

Like everything else about Dobson, his passive attitude was calculated. The evening was to belong to Ryan, who dominated the discussion with long, blustery yarns about everything from his passion for skateboarding to his views on abortion. With close-cropped hair, gauge earrings and a handlebar mustache reminiscent of the biker from the Village People, Ryan had studiously cast himself as a rebel for Christ. But behind his bad-boy veneer, he is being groomed as the heir to his dad's political empire. Adopted by his parents when he was six months old, Ryan interned for a year at Washington's premier right-wing Christian think tank, the Family Research Council (website), which his father founded, and today is dispatched across the country for speaking engagements before evangelical youth groups, which his father promotes.

While at the NRB, Ryan explained the logic behind his latest book, 2Die4, a sequel to his other ghostwritten masterpiece, Be Intolerant: Because Some Things Are Just Stupid. "Kids today are looking for something to die for, they're looking for a cause," Ryan said. "If you give them something to die for, they'll go to the edge of the earth for you. Kids like that give me hope for revolution in America."

They needn't worry. These folks will always plenty of causes for young Christian soldiers to die for.

See, for instance, the young Christian soldiers currently marching off to war in Iraq. Hey, it sure is going swell there since the election, isn't it?

The fascination with fascism

I suppose that, after winning a couple of way-cool Koufaxes for two different essays involving fascism, it'd be fair for people to ask if I have kind of a, you know, thing about the subject.

Well: yeah, I do. Pretty obviously. After all, besides the two essays, my first book (In God's Country) was explicitly about the proto-fascist element in America; and both Death on the Fourth of July and Strawberry Days are varying explorations of the fascist impulse in America.

Though I've often been accused of being "obsessed" with the subject, there's also a perfectly rational reason for my interest: Beginning in the late 1970s, as a fourth-generation Idahoan working in the northern Panhandle, I was confronted with the presence of genuine American fascists in my own back yard. And dealing with them in real life is a lot different than what it's like in the movies. Eventually, you also have to confront their humanity.

In the movies, white supremacists are pretty easily identifiable. They have shaven heads, wear lots of leather and tatoos, and preferably have a few chains hanging from various clothing and body parts. They are barely able to speak, other than flinging hateful verbal turds at everyone in their general vicinity. They have a crazed, skittering gleam in the one eye that doesn't wander. In other words, they are demons.

In real life, they are humans. There are a few skinheads who dress and act like the stereotype, but only a few. Most white supremacists dress like normal people. They hold normal jobs. They live in normal neighborhoods, and have seemingly normal kids. The only way you'll ever know they're not normal is if you get close enough to them that they open up, or they somehow otherwise let slip the nature of their beliefs.

Harmon Leon at SF Weekly recently discovered this, in an amusingly on-target piece in which he went undercover and posed as a potential recruit for a white-power outfit:

"Right this way," she answers with a perky smile, not taking my meaning and leading me past dining, joyful families right to the table of three white supremacists -- and a baby. I'm actually taken aback. They look normal: a guy with short hair and a button-down shirt; his wife, who wears glasses and looks like a soccer mom; their baby; and a dumpy blond college girl. The white supremacists are already eating their appetizers; they have frowns on their faces.

"Glad to see that you made it," says unsmiling Kevin, a guy who works as a computer software technician. The normality isn't just dumbfounding; it's disturbing. Maybe the joke's on me. Maybe they're not as extreme as I imagined!

I find myself apologizing to the haters.

"There's nothing I hate more than traffic," I present as an excuse. "Except, of course, the Jews." Surprisingly (or not surprisingly), they agree.

There's initial nervousness all around; they try to feel me out, yet, at the same time, they also try to impress me with the merits of their hate group. I, meanwhile, ponder whether my fork will work as a weapon in a situation of self-defense.

"Can we get a menu?" the white supremacist soccer mom asks the bubbly waiter.

... Now I see it. This is what happens to skinheads when they grow up, have kids, and move to the suburbs. They become fatherly, respectable, racist white supremacists, the kind you'd wave to at the company picnic.

"What were you expecting?' asks Kevin about my preconception of the evening.

I ponder for a moment. I was looking for depth, and this is all I got, and this is very simple: Hate groups hate. That's exactly what they do, in a cultlike way, expanding their ranks by preying on the lonely and isolated. There's no great intellectual explanation for it.

"This was different, a lot different than I was expecting," I say.

Fascism does not come with brownshirts, stormtroopers and grandiloquent displays of power. Those are what happens when it's too late.

It comes with a job and a home in the suburbs. It disguises itself in a surface reasonableness that's easily scratched to find the festering hatred and fear boiling beneath. I was struck, in fact, by how much the white supremacists I met and interviewed and dealt with were like people I grew up around: proud, hard-working, but not very succesful; a little ignorant, a little gullible, but sincere in believing they were doing the right thing. Primed, in other words, for an appeal based in the politics of resentment.

Faced with this reality, it became a point of interest to me to understand fascism itself and its underlying psychology. It is not a typical "ism" in that its ideology is indistinct at best; it is, as I've often discussed, better understood as a cultural and political pathology, which like psychological pathologies comprises not a single core principle but a constellation of traits, beliefs, and behaviors. Fascism happens first on a personal level. Followers are not "brainwashed" -- they join avidly, of their own accord.

Fascists have always been with us in America, at least since the days of the old Klan. But they have only briefly ever threatened to take political control of the nation. Mostly they have been relegated to the fringes. The danger comes when conditions create enough people susceptible to their appeal. Those conditions are in turn created by the behavior of both political leaders and the mass media in promulgating in the mainstream ideas, motifs, and symbols that originated with fascist extremists.

Seeing the "normal" face of fascism, and studying its historical antecedents, made me realize how easily it can insinuate itself in a democratic society, especially one facing a crisis. This was driven home for me, incidentally, by a visit to the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, which was as emotional an experience as I've ever had at a museum. A portion of the displays emphasized the roles of ordinary people, everyday Germans, in making mass genocide possible. Comparing these Germans to my everyday Idaho fascists, I realized how few steps are involved, in fact, in making these little monsters, in shifting from resentful conservatism to eliminationist fascism.

This is largely a product of the everyday nature of so many of the traits that form stars in the constellation of fascist pathology -- that, and the fact that fascism always clothes itself in the colors and iconography of the "true" national identity it claims to genuinely represent. Fascism always looks normal on the surface, even though its essentially totalitarian stench can never be disguised.

I've been arguing that as the conservative movement morphed into a discrete force consumed with the acquisition of power by any means necessary, it has, almost by virtue of the very forces into which it has begun tapping, taken on increasingly fascist traits. The result has been a movement that replicates the appearance of fascism but lacks its black core of violence -- a simulacrum, if you will, of fascism.

It seems that I haven't been alone in recognizing the acquisition of these traits. In recent weeks, a number of traditional conservatives and libertarians have been chiming in from different quarters, observing some of the same similarities.

The problem is that some of them are wrong, at least in the conclusions they draw. In some cases, their bad analysis only creates a gross misunderstanding of the dynamic currently in play. And some of them, frankly, are not in the best positions to be accusing others of cozying up to fascists.

Interestingly enough, the charges seem primarily to be coming from the self-described "paleo-conservatives" -- a faction of the conservative movement constituted both of genuinely traditional conservatives and some of its more ideologically extreme characters.

The first salvo, from Paul Craig Roberts, was reasonable enough, picking primarily on how far from genuine conservatism the Bush administration has wandered, particularly on its adventurist foreign policy and its profligate deficit spending, and noting that Bush's army of defenders had developed a decidedly vicious nature:

There is nothing conservative about these positions. To label them conservative is to make the same error as labeling the 1930s German Brownshirts conservative.

American liberals called the Brownshirts "conservative," because the Brownshirts were obviously not liberal. They were ignorant, violent, delusional, and they worshipped a man of no known distinction. Brownshirts’ delusions were protected by an emotional force field. Adulation of power and force prevented Brownshirts from recognizing implications for their country of their reckless doctrines.

Like Brownshirts, the new conservatives take personally any criticism of their leader and his policies. To be a critic is to be an enemy. I went overnight from being an object of conservative adulation to one of derision when I wrote that the US invasion of Iraq was a "strategic blunder."

Roberts, it's worth noting, does not conclude that Bush or the neoconservatives are fascist; a careful reading reveals that he only observes the familial likenesses inherent in the landscape -- that is, among the rank and file, the ordinary "movement conservatives" whose adulation is being stoked by those at the top.

Instead, that conclusion was voiced by Lew Rockwell in his piece, "The Reality of Red-State Fascism," which offers the following take:

I'm actually not surprised at this. It has been building for some time. If you follow hate-filled sites such as Free Republic, you know that the populist right in this country has been advocating nuclear holocaust and mass bloodshed for more than a year now. The militarism and nationalism dwarfs anything I saw at any point during the Cold War. It celebrates the shedding of blood, and exhibits a maniacal love of the state. The new ideology of the red-state bourgeoisie seems to actually believe that the US is God marching on earth – not just godlike, but really serving as a proxy for God himself.

... In short, what we have alive in the US is an updated and Americanized fascism. Why fascist? Because it is not leftist in the sense of egalitarian or redistributionist. It has no real beef with business. It doesn't sympathize with the downtrodden, labor, or the poor. It is for all the core institutions of bourgeois life in America: family, faith, and flag. But it sees the state as the central organizing principle of society, views public institutions as the most essential means by which all these institutions are protected and advanced, and adores the head of state as a godlike figure who knows better than anyone else what the country and world's needs, and has a special connection to the Creator that permits him to discern the best means to bring it about.

The American right today has managed to be solidly anti-leftist while adopting an ideology – even without knowing it or being entirely conscious of the change – that is also frighteningly anti-liberty. This reality turns out to be very difficult for libertarians to understand or accept. For a long time, we've tended to see the primary threat to liberty as coming from the left, from the socialists who sought to control the economy from the center. But we must also remember that the sweep of history shows that there are two main dangers to liberty, one that comes from the left and the other that comes from the right. Europe and Latin America have long faced the latter threat, but its reality is only now hitting us fully.

Rockwell's argument is compelling, if for no other reason than that he limns the aspects of the modern conservative movement that most strikingly resemble classic fascism. However, he fails to take into account the differences between classic fascists and today's conservatives, and for the time being they are substantial enough to at least seriously undermine the argument. There are, as I explained in "The Rise of Pseudo Fascism," many such differences, but the most obvious of these is the lack of the dark heart of fascism: an overt aesthetic of violence, as well as the widespread use of violence and intimidation as a political tactic.

Following shortly in Rockwell's footsteps was "libertarian" Justin Raimondo of AntiWar.com, who weighed in with a piece titled, "Today's Conservatives are Fascists," which carries Rockwell's identification of the neoconservatives particularly as "fascist" even further, though Raimondo seems to have only a tenuous grasp of the concept, other than that it's a kind of catch-all term for totalitarianism. See, for instance, this passage:

Casting aside all that Frankfurt School Marxist nonsense about fascism as the "enraged bourgeoisie," and rejecting the terminological prissiness of those who insist on fascism as a very specific mode of economic organization, I would build on the definition of Communism proffered by the late Susan Sontag, who famously called the Soviet system "fascism with a human face."

Surely "fascism with a 'democratic' face" sums up the Bushian "global democratic revolution" just as accurately and succinctly ...

Raimondo seems to be defining fascism according to another definition that hinges on an unclear conception of the term itself; it becomes, in essence, a vague circular definition that gets commingled with Soviet Stalinism. Not exactly coherent logic.

But then, this doesn't surprise me. Raimondo has a history of incoherence and, more importantly, a taste for conspiracism. Back when Bill Clinton was president, Raimondo established a track record of promoting apocalyptic pre-Y2K New World Order conspiracy theories that were very similar in nature to what we were seeing promoted by far-right militiamen and Freemen, as well as white supremacists.

Then, when he and his allies were called out on this, Raimondo responded by attacking anti-fascist organizations, something he continues to do today.

In reality, many members of the so-called "paleo-conservative" faction that is now eager to label neoconservatives "fascists" were themselves closely aligned, both ideologically and financially, with the most active strain of genuine proto-fascism active in America today. Many of these same critics were eager, in the 1990s, to attack efforts to rein in the anti-government extremism that ran rampant in the "Patriot"/militia movement, and were quick defend extremists like the Montana Freemen. Even Rockwell, in his essay, noted this:

The 1994 revolution failed of course, in part because the anti-government opposition was intimidated into silence by the Oklahoma City bombing of April 1995. The establishment somehow managed to pin the violent act of an ex-military man on the right-wing libertarianism of the American bourgeoisie. It was said by every important public official at that time that to be anti-government was to give aid and support to militias, secessionists, and other domestic terrorists. It was a classic intimidation campaign but, combined with a GOP leadership that never had any intention to change DC, it worked to shut down the opposition.

This is, of course, pure balderdash. No one was accused of being an extremist supporter of militias merely for being anti-government; hell, half of today's conservative pundit class comprises people who made careers by being "anti-government" in the 1990s (calling Rush Limbaugh). The only serious accusations of such support were accompanied by actual evidence.

People like Rockwell and Raimondo were criticized, justifiably, for trading in far-right "New World Order" and various anti-Clinton conspiracy theories. Perhaps they're sore -- again, justifiably -- for being singled out, since by the time the impeachment drama had played out, a whole cable division of allegedly mainstream conservative pundits had repeated the same theories for national consumption, with scarcely an eyebrow raised. Still, it's hard to have much sympathy for people who supported the work of "thinkers" like the late Sam Francis, the late neo-Confederate who had a habit of writing for white-supremacist organs like the Occidental Review. It's similarly hard to take seriously their cries of "fascist."

The same is true of another key "paleo-con" figure, Patrick Buchanan. His dalliances with extremists have ranged from his work in the 1980s as a former Nixon operative helping a Nazi-riddled "special interest" group attack the efforts of the Office of Special Intelligence to bring old Nazis to justice to his long association with Larry Pratt, one of the first advocates of the militia movement.

Still, the most sensible iteration of the paleo-conservative concern about the seemingly fascist proclivities of the conservative movement came in a Scott McConnell piece in Buchanan's American Conservative magazine titled "Hunger for Dictatorship", which touches on many of the same points I've discussed here:

But Rockwell (and Roberts and Raimondo) is correct in drawing attention to a mood among some conservatives that is at least latently fascist. Rockwell describes a populist Right website that originally rallied for the impeachment of Bill Clinton as "hate-filled ... advocating nuclear holocaust and mass bloodshed for more than a year now." One of the biggest right-wing talk-radio hosts regularly calls for the mass destruction of Arab cities. Letters that come to this magazine from the pro-war Right leave no doubt that their writers would welcome the jailing of dissidents. And of course it's not just us. When USA Today founder Al Neuharth wrote a column suggesting that American troops be brought home sooner rather than later, he was blown away by letters comparing him to Tokyo Rose and demanding that he be tried as a traitor. That mood, Rockwell notes, dwarfs anything that existed during the Cold War. "It celebrates the shedding of blood, and exhibits a maniacal love of the state. The new ideology of the red-state bourgeoisie seems to actually believe that the US is God marching on earth—not just godlike, but really serving as a proxy for God himself."

McConnell goes on to draw extensively from remarks by the famed scholar Fritz Stern (whose remarks I've likewise noted carefully). But he draws, I think, some important lines, and realizes some important distinctions:

Secondly, it is necessary to distinguish between a sudden proliferation of fascist tendencies and an imminent danger. There may be, among some neocons and some more populist right-wingers, unmistakable antidemocratic tendencies. But America hasn’t yet experienced organized street violence against dissenters or a state that is willing—in an unambiguous fashion—to jail its critics. The administration certainly has its far Right ideologues—the Washington Post’s recent profile of Alberto Gonzales, whose memos are literally written for him by Cheney aide David Addington, provides striking evidence. But the Bush administration still seems more embarrassed than proud of its most authoritarian aspects. Gonzales takes some pains to present himself as an opponent of torture; hypocrisy in this realm is perhaps preferable to open contempt for international law and the Bill of Rights.

McConnell identifies exactly what is wrong with the arguments of Rockwell and Raimondo that Bush and the neoconservatives are themselves fascists. They mistake a proliferation of traits for an actual manifestation, without taking into account the key differences.

What all of them miss, importantly, is the role of movement leaders -- particularly Bush, Cheney, Karl Rove, and the neocons -- in encouraging these proto-fascist traits. There is no evidence that they're doing so because they themselves are actually proto-fascists; rather, I think it remains clear that these people are pro-corporate crony capitalists, and the evidence strongly suggests that they're indulging this style of politics for the sake of shoring up their numbers and securing their political base. The strongest evidence for this is the ongoing minuet the Bush administration dances with the neo-Confederate faction that now rules the South.

In other words, "movement conservatives" are being molded into a mindset that increasingly resembles classic fascism, but it's being done by leaders who mostly find this mindset convenient and readily manipulable. Unfortunately, the history of fascism is such that the arrogant corporatist belief that they contain these forces is not well grounded.

What's important to understand is the real dynamic: A growing populist "movement" is being encouraged increasingly to adopt attitudes that, taken together, become increasingly fascist. Greater numbers of individuals are being conditioned to think alike, and more importantly, to accept an increasingly vicious response to dissent. This does not mean that genuine fascism has arrived as a real political force in America; but it does mean the groundwork is being created for just such a nightmare, by irresponsible politicians tapping into terrible forces beyond their ability to control.

If even "paleo-conservatives" can see this, there's hope of stopping it. But I think we need to begin with a clear understanding of who, what, and why the fascists are.

The latent fascists who are the biggest problem right now are not Republican leaders. It is their oxyconned, Foxcized, Freeped-out, fanatic army of followers, comprising ordinary people, who pose the long-term problem. Drawing them back from the abyss is the real challenge that confronts us.

Minutemen indeed

Looks like those mighty militiamen planning to organize a group of "Minutemen" to patrol the U.S. border with Mexico may turn out to be a classic right-wing case of all hate, no cattle.

According to a report by Michael Marizco at the Arizona Daily Star, the actual level of threat they pose, in terms of actually attracting the promised 550-man force, is not exactly dire:

Organizers of the Minuteman Project say the scenario will become reality on April 1.

But those organizers have made similar statements in the past, generating a steady barrage of newspaper and television stories. Meanwhile, law enforcement officials and other experts say they have failed to produce substantive results.

And some wonder if anything will be different this time, especially since the organizers have failed to provide any proof of the involvement of 550 people they say have volunteered already.

"Obviously, this is driven by a desire for publicity as opposed to a desire for results," Gov. Janet Napolitano said when asked about the project at a press conference recently.

The last "call to arms" issued by one of the Minuteman Project founders resulted in a handful of volunteers and unproven contentions that they had detained more than 4,000 illegal entrants. The irony is that the same media that have reported the membership numbers without verification could fuel the hype and incite a mob to head to the border this time around, officials say.

Whether anybody other than newspaper and television crews will show up this time is dubious, some say, given the organizers' history.

Consider:

-- In November 2002, Minuteman Project founder Chris Simcox said dozens of people would come out for his much-debated Civil Homeland Defense, the Tombstone-based group that was supposed to patrol the border, gather up illegal entrants, turn them over to the U.S. Border Patrol and show up the federal government for not doing its job.

The group has seized about 150 illegal entrants, a far cry from the 4,000 Simcox contends have been apprehended since he started two years ago, according to Miguel Escobar, Mexican consul in Douglas. The consulate responds to every citizen's encounter.

By contrast, Escobar has tracked at least 65 incidents in which citizens stopped entrants since 1999, when groups and individuals such as Cochise rancher Roger Barnett, American Border Patrol and Ranch Rescue began apprehensions in Cochise County.

-- The Border Patrol has had three to five instances in which citizens were standing with a captured group of illegal entrants in the past year, said Tucson Sector spokesman Andy Adame. By contrast, the agency receives 300 to 500 anonymous calls from other civilians each month, he said. The agency has adopted a "wait and see" attitude toward the Minuteman Project.

-- A handful of people showed up at the first organizational meeting of the Civil Homeland Defense on Dec. 7, 2002. Fifty were expected.

-- On Jan. 1, 2003, two volunteers showed up for the first training session. Four reporters were there to greet them.

Now, those of us tracking these border extremists have been aware of Simcox's "Minutemen Project" for awhile now. Back in late October 2004, the following was posted at Free Republic (at this link, since taken down), essentially advertising the project:

Dear Americans,
The MinuteMan Project currently has 19 volunteers from the following 10 states:

Arizona 4; California 4; Colorado 1; Florida 1; Massachusetts 2; Oklahoma 1; Oregon 2; Texas 2; Virginia 1; Wyoming 1

If YOU, or someone you know, would like to be a participant in The Minuteman Project, please read the recruiting poster below and respond accordingly. * * * * * *

To Citizens of the Republic of the United States of America:

Anyone interested in spending up to 30 days manning the Arizona border as a blocking force against entry into the U.S. by illegal aliens early next spring?

I invite you to join me in Tombstone, Arizona in early spring of 2005 to protect our country from a 40-year-long invasion across our southern border with Mexico.

Chris Simcox of Civil Homeland Defense, and the publisher of the Tombstone Tumbleweed newspaper in Tombstone, Arizona has been protecting our borders for five years with only a handful of patriotic volunteers. It is time we provided him with reinforcements.

I am recruiting volunteers to converge on the southern border of Arizona for the purpose of aiding the U.S. Border Patrol in "spotting" intruders entering the U.S. illegally.

This is strictly a volunteer project. No financial subsidies are available. And, you will probably need a tent, sleeping bag etc. You will be responsible for all costs associated with your participation.

Currently, about 5,000 illegal aliens enter the US/Arizona border DAILY. Another 5.000 invade the U.S. from the Texas, California and New Mexico borders...DAILY. That's 10,000 per day - 300,000 per month. Over 3,000,000 (three million) per year!

Our objective will be to spot these intruders by eyesight, or with the aid of binoculars - telescopes, and inform the U.S. Border Patrol of the location of the trespassers so that border patrol agents can intercept and detain them. Generally, we will not be confronting the illegal aliens. The tentative area of observation will be a 10-mile stretch of forested highlands, and lowlands along the San Pedro River.

I hope to bring serious media attention to this event, which will tune the American people into the shameful fact that 21st century minutemen/women have to secure US borders because the US government REFUSES to do so.

I estimate the cost per person (for 30 days) could be as high as $3,500, depending on your travel, meal and lodging arrangements. I will be visiting the Tombstone area in mid December or early January to meet with Chris Simcox regarding the availability of facilities for those who do not want to use tents or travel trailers. I intend to stay the entire 30 days of this mission, however, that length of time is not a requirement to volunteer.

I will try to negotiate substantially discounted rates for lodging, especially if we are bringing 200 - 300, or more "vacationing guests" into Tombstone all at once.

The Tombstone area parks also offer some interesting hunting, hiking, mountain climbing and fishing opportunities for avid outdoorsmen/women.

I will be acting as an interim coordinator of The MinuteMan Project. My immediate purpose is to recruit as many volunteers as possible.

If YOU are interested in participating in this unprecedented event, please contact me via email at:

Century21MinuteMan@sbcglobal.net

Please provide me with a brief history of yourself, for example, your vocation, any military background, outdoors (outback) experience, etc. There are no written prerequisites for joining this mission, however, I would appreciate knowing something about the experiences of those responding to this invitation.

Please INCLUDE the following information in your email response:

1. Name

2. Address

3. Telephone number and best time to call

4. Brief statement why you want to participate in this project

5. Brief history of any experiences related to the mission of The MinuteMan Project.

6. Amount of time (1 - 30 days) you desire to participate.

7. Any physical ailments or disabilities that might limit the "type" of participation, i.e., limited to deskwork only, confined to a wheel chair, etc.

The MinuteMan Project is in its embryo stage, therefore, information about all aspects of the project is not yet readily available. More information will follow as this plan comes together.

[PLEASE FORWARD THIS EMAIL]

Cheers, An American Without A Country

James W. Gilchrist, BAJ, BSBA, MBA (Taxation), CPA (Ca.) - retired Aliso Viejo, California.

Educate the Public. Please add to your emails:

"Government must defend us against INVASION by others" -U.S. Constitution, Article IV, Section 4.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing." -Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

"It is a sad day in America when the law-makers side with the law-breakers against the law-abiding citizens." -Ezola Foster

"In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a brave and scarce man, hated and scorned. When the cause succeeds, however, the timid join him...for then it costs nothing to be a patriot." -Mark Twain

"While we slept, the United States was stolen." - author unknown

This is starting to sound more and more like the great militia summit that was planned for central Montana (near Lewistown, to be exact) around the time of the Freemen standoff, which was advertised as a chance for all the region's Patriots to come together to talk strategy in the event of "another Ruby Ridge" in Jordan.

Eight militiamen showed. They were outnumbered by the 15 reporters at the summit.

Koufaxed again

I'm proud and honored to announce that I've won this year's 2004 Koufax Award for Best Series, the second year running that Orcinus has won in that category. It's for the series, "The Rise of Pseudo Fascism," which ran between mid-September and mid-November of this year. (A full set of links is available in the upper left corner of the blog.)

I'm a little lucky, since the balloting actually finished in a tie this year, with Bill in Portland, Maine, for his marvelous "Cheers and Jeers" series, which you ought to go read. And I have to admit to being astonished that we finished ahead of Eric Muller and Greg Robinson's series responding to Michelle Malkin.

Congratulations to all the winners, and for that matter all the finalists.

And while you're there, be sure to drop by and plug a few nickels into their donation jar. Wampum recently ran into server trouble because of all the Koufax traffic; it'd be nice to put them far enough over the hump that it doesn't happen again.

I'm in the final editing stages of a nice PDF version of "The Rise of Pseudo Fascism," which will include a new introduction. I'll be making it available in a couple of days as part of a fund-raising drive I'm planning.

The voice of extremism

No sooner do we mention Glenn Spencer than he pops up, unsurprisingly, in an ABC News report on the formation of a 500-person volunteer army of "Minutemen" who are pledged to patrolling the border with Mexico:

Civilian patrols are nothing new along the southern border, where crossing the international line is sometimes as easy as stepping over a few rusty strands of barbed wire. But they usually are limited to small, informal groups, leaving organizers to believe the Minuteman Project is the largest of its kind on the southern border.

It may also prove to be a magnet for what Glenn Spencer, president of the private American Border Patrol, described as camouflage-wearing, weapons-toting hard-liners who might get a little carried away with their assignments.

"How are they going to keep the nutcases out of there? They can't control that," said Spencer, whose 40-volunteer group, based in Hereford, Ariz., has used unmanned aerial vehicles and other high-tech equipment to track and report the number of border crossings for more than two years.

"There's a storm gathering here on the border, and there are conditions ripe for some difficulty," he said.

What's strange about this account is that it almost paints Spencer as the voice of reason in all this. In fact, he's been responsible for stirring this particular pot for some time now. Sounds like he must not be getting a piece of the action.

Though you certainly could say that his concern about attracting kooks is based in experience.

Pestilence

It doesn't take long for that right-wing transmission belt to kick in. Hardly had we noted a fresh iteration of the old "immigrants are vermin" themes common to nativist agitation of the past -- the promotion of the notion that immigrants are disease carriers by the Washington Times and its attendant right-wing ideologues, notably Michelle Malkin -- than we get a fresh example of how the meme is spread on the ground.

In Colorado, health officials are being swamped with inquiries regarding spreading a rumor that immigrants were bringing the Ebola virus -- you know, the source of an often-fatal hemmorrhagic fever -- across the border:

Coroner Mark Young has been swamped by calls stemming from a report on an anti- immigrant Web site that posted erroneous information about a man's death at Montrose Memorial Hospital.

The Web site, citing a "reliable source," posted an item Wednesday that said a Mexican man had died at the hospital and suggested Ebola virus was to blame.

However, it wasn't Ebola at all. It was a strep bacteria that is "not contagious and extremely rare."

Who was behind this false and extraordinarily irresponsible rumor?

[Young] said he was further disturbed that the Web site, which Young called "anti-Mexican, didn't even check before putting it out. The Mexican consulate is upset, so are a lot of people, and it just isn't true," Young said. "All they had to do was call and ask."

He noted his office had faxed results of the autopsy to area news media on Feb. 10.

The sponsors of the Web site made no effort to determine if the "reliable source" was accurate, according to a man who answered the Web site's telephone Thursday and identified himself as Glenn Spencer of Sierra Vista, Ariz.

"We put up rumors from people we believe to be reliable," Spencer said. "That's why we call them rumors."

You can see the item here -- including a later correction that neglects to note that the disease was non-contagious.

Spencer is a bona fide right-wing extremist, one of the leaders involved in organizing "border militias," as well as a variety of other nakeedly bigoted anti-immigrant agitation. Spencer's organization has been designated a "hate group" by the SPLC.

Spencer is also one of the people who originated the meme that MEChA is a "racist" organization -- a notion later endorsed by the likes of Michelle Malkin, Glenn Reynolds, and Powerline. None of these folks list American Patrol on their blogrolls, but they do link approvingly to Spencer's allies at VDare, including Steve Sailer. But then, that's how the transmission belt works.

Or maybe comparing it to a disease vector would be more appropriate.

I get letters

Some letters really don't need any accompanying commentary. Like this one:

Dave,

Your blog is entertaining, but your running, one sided debate is mostly with straw men of the kosher conservative variety. The real right doesn't take Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh seriously, and we know better than to use "exterminationist rhetoric." The real right is at Stormfront and VNN forum.

Anyway, I also wanted to address your whining at the fact that kosher kareer conservatives like Coulter and Limbaugh and Savage/Weiner are getting mean and using "exterminationist rhetoric." I agree that they are, but your side asked for it. Remember the early 90's? I was on a college campus back then, and I was a mere "kosher conservative" myself. I made the mistake of asking a professor why everyone was bashing Reagan so much. it was an honest question, and I was there to learn. The students, led by a Jewish kid, started literally screaming at me and calling me racist, Nazi, etc. What most surprised me was that the professor didn't enforce a standard of civility in the classroom, but permitted anarchy. After that it was a typical campaign of hate and bullying, calling me "nazi" in the halls. I could have easily beaten them up, I was an off campus Army reservist and athlete, but I didn't want to get kicked out of college. I was there to learn.

One of the things the Jewish kid would say to me was, "Why don't you go to your friends at Stormfront?" One day I said, "Fine, I will. I'll check them out!" I didn't even have a computer, so I used the one in the library. I went on Stormfront, and complained about my treatment at college, and complained about multiculturalism. What they said to me there was, "Multiculturalism and identity politics is not something to be mourned, but to be celebrated, becuase it means eventually white people will be allowed to have identity politics too. Ever wonder why there's a Hispanic club, a Jewish club, a Black club, an Asian club, a Gay club, but no White club?" Flawless logic, eh? To me it certainly is, and no one from your side has ever even tried to answer why white heteros are not permitted a group identity while gays and coloreds are allowed to have group identities and clubs based on their race and perversion.

So I thanked the Jewish kid for sending me to Stormfront, and I quit the College Republicans. I stopped wanting to be liked. And you know what? They backed off. THey stopped their catcalls and bullying behaviour, because they knew I was no longer restrained by "kosher konservativism." and that's the only way to deal with left wing bullying -- to say, "fine I'm a racist. Fine I'm a Nazi. I wish the Holocaust happened for real, because people like you deserver it." I really said that to him. And you know what? He and his little cat club of hat on backwards pussy boys didn't jump all over me. Nope, they backed off. I saw fear in their eyes after that What cowardly scum. Yep, that's how I learned to stop worrying about being called a racist and learned to love Hitler. You guys sowed the winds with bullying political correctness, now enjoy your whirlwind. From College Republican to Nazi in one semester. Oh, and I got several other people to go to Stomfront too, who were inspired by my courage and equally disgusted at TJB (typical Jewish behaviour).

I guess to sum it up, the Left are terrible salesmen . . . er . . salespeople, of their ideology. They are very mean and intolerant, and they have an exclusionary reflex towards anyone who disagrees in the slightest. So quick to censor, ban, bully, and ostracize. Thank God you're Stupid, is all we can say. (there's an essay out there called "Thank God They're Stupid" by Grant Bruer google it, he's as extreme as it gets, but very good writing) Cheers!

Randy

Nothing like a living, breathing example of how the transmission belt operates, is there?

Dumb and dumberest

Mark Hyman, star of Sinclair Broadcasting, and host of "The Point" -- a two-minute commentary that is predictably a litany of conservative talking points, forcefed nightly to the 62 stations Sinclair owns -- will never, one hopes, be mistaken for one of the right's leading intellectual lights.

Media Matters directs us to some of Hyman's recent "points" in which he has begun attacking university professors. They included this:

Hyman also claimed Michael R. Ball, professor of sociology at University of Wisconsin-Superior, "announced in a published paper that he discovered the common thread of hate groups: Christianity." Then Hyman quipped: "I'll make certain to mention this to all of the Christian suicide-bombers in the Middle East." In fact, Ball's 1996 paper focused specifically on American hate groups, and it did not identify Christianity in general as a motivation for hate. Rather, Ball identified a particular ideology, "Christian Identity" -- a distinct and extremist ideology that has little to do with mainstream Christianity -- as one of several "common threads" among the groups he studied. Here's the key excerpt from Ball's paper:

Although each hate group had its specific emphasis, we found common threads of ideology which were woven through all. (note 7) These included Christian Identity or similar religious beliefs, white separatism as a part of the "natural order," religious justifications for violence, the "right to keep and bear arms," opposition to political "liberalism" in any form, strict separation of male and female roles, opposition to Affirmative Action, welfare, or other "governmental meddling."

[...]

Space limits me from explaining each of these in depth, although I would like to briefly discuss Christian Identity because of its centrality and its pervasiveness among racist groups.

Christian Identity (note 8) is a modern version of the "British Israelism" espoused by Henry Ford and others in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. (note 9) This belief holds that in the beginning, God created the "beast of the field," including many resembling humans. These beasts (referred to as "mud people," or "mud races") were not human, lacking a soul. Finally, God created the "Adamic (white) race" and instilled its members with souls. ... British Israelism held that members of "the British race" were the true Israelites, while current Christian Identity believes that the true Israelites are members of any of the ten "Aryan nations" including the major countries of western Europe, the United States, and Canada. In their view, whenever the Bible speaks of conflicts, war and evil, it is in reference to maintaining their "race" from contamination or annihilation.

Funny thing. I'm sometimes accused of blurring the lines between mainstream conservatives and extremists. But that's exactly what Hyman does. Either he's a blunderer of the first order, or he's an extremist mole.

So, just so there's no confusion: Christian Identity has nothing to do with mainstream Christianity. It is an extremist racial belief system that adopts the guise of Christianity but has practices and beliefs that are not part of any traditional mainstream church. Most of their beliefs, in fact, constitute heresies for many faiths.

I'm hoping this was just a really dumb mistake. Because if it wasn't, and Hyman wanted us to think that Identity was just another kind of Christianity, well ... that's a problem.

Projection: Not just for theaters

Those mighty morphin' power rangers at Powerline continue to flail away at Jimmy Carter, criticizing him for behind-the-scenes negotiations with the Soviets that would enhance his chances at the polls in 1979. In the process, they prove once again that the Republican right is remarkably prone (as Richard Hofstadter might have predicted) to projecting their own traits onto their opponents:

Conspiring with our chief enemy to try to influence an American Presidential election: We could have called that treason, but we didn't. You can form your own opinion.

Apparently, the fellows at Powerline have never heard of the "October Surprise" plot of 1979, parts of which I detailed here:

Here are the relevant excerpts from Gary Sick's definitive text on the case, October Surprise: America's Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan (Random House, 1991), pp. 116-123:

One of the most mystifying events of the entire election year took place in late September or early October 1980. The basic facts are not in dispute. [Future National Security Adviser] Richard Allen, together with Robert McFarlane and Laurence Silberman, met at the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel in Washington, D.C., with a Middle Easterner who offered to arrange the release of the American hostages directly to the Republicans. Beyond that rudimentary description, however, there is nothing but disagreement. Even people who admit attending the same meeting cannot agree on exact dates, times, or places.

... Allen has said that he was initially contacted by Robert McFarlane, then a senior aide to Senator John Tower of Texas. Tower was a longtime friend of vice-presidential candidate George Bush and he was at that time the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee. McFarlane, a retired Marine Corps colonel, had been the executive assistant of the National Security Council under Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft in the Nixon and Ford administrations, and he was a strong supporter of the Reagan presidential candidacy.

... According to Allen, Silberman, and McFarlane, they had a relatively brief meeting in late September with a man who appeared to be of Middle Eastern origin. This man, who claimed to be in contact with representatives of the Iranian government, made a presentation in which he offered to arrange the release of the American hostages directly to the Republican campaign. This offer was rejected out of hand, according to the three American participants, and the meeting was terminated abruptly. Allen and Silberman later insisted that the man made no mention of military equipment or the possibility of an arms-for-hostages swap.

... Silberman said he told the man his offer was totally unacceptable since "We have one President at a time."

However, as Sick goes on to detail, there are numerous problems with their account.

The unidentified Middle Easterner likely was a self-described international arms merchant name Hushang Lavi, who claimed that he was the man at the meeting. He says Lavi fits the physical description the Americans gave, and he furthermore had substantial evidence of being involved in the meeting (some of which actually surfaced independently through a third party after his death). Lavi claimed that he represented two officials of the Iranian government, and was offering the hostages in exchange for a pledge of F-14 parts -- the same parts, you may recall, that played such a key role in the Iran-Contra scandal. But Sick reports that Lavi claimed the refusal was not the noble one described by Larry Silberman:

According to Lavi, his offer was rejected, but his recollection differed from those of the Americans. Lavi said the three Americans refused his offer on the grounds that they were "in touch with the Iranians themselves" and did not need his assistance. Both Allen and Silberman later insisted adamantly in interviews that the man they met was not Lavi.

Much of Sick's book, in fact, details that Lavi's characterization was substantially the case -- that is, the Reagan camp in fact was in close contact with other Iranians who controlled the hostages and were capable of releasing them.

The source for one of the key pieces of substantiation for Lavi's participation in the meeting was Ari Ben-Menashe, who had been a top agent and official in the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad from 1977 to 1987, and was directly involved in Iranian affairs. Ben-Menashe later went on to write a book detailing some of the key aspects of the October Surprise affair in a book titled Profits of War, which was dismissed as fantasy by American and Israeli officials, but whose chief components were later substantially corroborated.

According to Sick, Ben-Menashe largely confirmed Lavi's participation, but with a twist:

According to Ben-Menashe, the L'Enfant Plaza meeting was the result of an effort by Israeli intelligence to hasten the end of the hostage crisis.

The Israelis, Ben-Menashe said, were becoming increasingly uncomfortable about their involvement in U.S. domestic politics resulting from the Casey-Karubbi meetings in Madrid. ... So they attempted, without success, to short-circuit the entire problem by arranging a swap that would put an end to hostage issue before the election. Lavi, he said, was working for Israel when he helped to set up the L'Enfant Plaza meeting.

Ben-Menashe said that he traveled to the United States in late September 1980 with Dr. Ahmed Omshei, a former professor at Tehran University and a consultant to General Fakuri, the Iranian minister of defense. It was Omshei, according to Ben-Menashe, who met with Allen, McFarlane, and Silberman at the L'Enfant Plaza as an unofficial representative of the Iranian government. Ben-Menashe claims that there was not one meeting but two, and that he was present at one of them. Lavi, he said, was involved in making the arrangements and was briefed on the discussions, but he did not actually participate in the meetings. Ben-Menashe agrees that the meetings did not result in any action related to the hostages, but he believes the offer was considered seriously by others in the campaign, at least for several days, before it was rejected.

As Sick goes on to detail, Hushang Lavi later approached officials from the independent third-party candidacy of John Anderson with an identical offer. And this offer was immediately reported to officials at the Carter administration, which was of course the proper and correct course for any patriotic American. Not so the Reaganites, as Sick explains:

Whoever the man was who met the Americans at the L'Enfant Plaza, and regardless of the nature of his offer -- whether an arms-for-hostages swap or simply a misguided attempt to intervene in the U.S. election -- it should have been reported to the administration. Here was a man who claimed to be in contact with representatives of Khomeini and who was offering to arrange a prompt release of the hostages. The very fact that such an offer was being made while negotiations were under way with Tehran was relevant to the negotiations. Perhaps this offer was a hoax. Perhaps he had his own political agenda. Perhaps his scheme had only a two percent change of success. No matter.

The correct response to such an offer is not to declare, "We have only one President at a time," as Silberman and Allen have claimed repeatedly, and then to walk away. The correct response is, "I'm sorry but you have come to the wrong address. Let me direct you to the proper authorities." ...

Silberman, years later, argued that "such a report could have been leaked during the campaign" to embarrass the Reagan-Bush campaign in a "reverse twist." That argument may accurately reflect the suspicious state of mind that existed within the Reagan-Bush campaign. At a minimum, it suggests that short-term tactical political advantage outweighed the possibility, however slight, that the man actually may have had useful contacts with the Khomeini regime, as he claimed.

And as Sick explains in detail, it was clear that the Carter administration would not in fact have done as Silberman suspected -- because it had the ability to do just that with the Anderson campaign, and did not do so.

What Carter was doing with the Russians in the 1979 was basic tit-for-tat diplomatic backscratching, the kind that occurred all the time during the Cold War: If you ease up on a problem policy that helps us win election, we'll reciprocate.

What the Reagan campaign team did was, in fact, negotiate with factions responsible for holding American citizens hostage in such a way that would ensure they were not released until later. We could have called that treason, but didn't. But you know, maybe we should have.

What's especially noteworthy about all this is that this issue is hardly a dead letter -- unlike the matter of Jimmy Carter, who has not held office as a Democrat for 24 years now.

Note that the person under discussion in the above link to the October Surprise matter is none other than Laurence Silberman -- chairman of George Bush's "independent" commission to investigate the intelligence failures that brought about the 9/11 attacks. Silberman, according to the Washington Post, was one of the leading candidates to become Bush's "intelligence czar" -- until, that is, he decided to name the even more execrable John Negroponte.

Liberals equal terrorists

Via Atrios, I see that those icons of the right-wing blogosphere, Powerline, have penned the following remarks about a better American than they, in response to his apparently wrong prediction about the prospects for the Iraqi election:

Jimmy Carter isn't just misguided or ill-informed. He's on the other side.

To which Matt Yglesias responds:

Jimmy Carter left office as one of the least-loved presidents ever, and you'd still be hard-pressed to find a liberal who'll mount a really full-throated defense of his tenure in office. But on the other side? Not some academic or blogger or activist type, but a veteran of the United States military and a former President of the United States. On the other side. A traitor. These are serious allegations, seriously demented.

I don't think it's at all unreasonable to say that Hindrocket owes Carter a serious apology. Flinging this sort of totally unsubstantiated allegation is disgusting and utterly destructive of any effort to have serious debate about anything. Is Jimmy Carter really in league with the jihadist forces responsible for the murder of thousands of Americas? Is this what Power Line's fans and those who link to them believe? That a jihadist agent managed to get himself elected president? That an ex-president turned traitor?

Ah, but Matt: Being Republican means never saying you're sorry, whether you have to or not. You should know that by now.

But this is just par for the course for Powerline. Accusing liberals generically of being not merely traitorous in inclination, but in fact actually, knowingly aligned with radical Islamists is a stock in trade line of argument for these guys.

See, for instance, this earlier Powerline post:

We have often commented on how many leftists have seamlessly taken up the cause of Islamic fascism--a movement that superficially seems to have little in common with Marxism or other forms of Western socialism. The alliance between the Western left and Islamism suggests that Western radicalism was always mostly about hating the West in general, and especially, America.

Regular readers know that this "traitor talk" has long been a topic of this blog, and I've posted at length on many occasions about how it marks a real rise in latent far-right impulses. Still, Digby had one of the more insightful discussions of the problem the other day, bouncing off a similarly trenchant post by Ted Barlow. Both are worthy contributions.

Bad pennies

Old haters never die. They just reinvent themselves.

I'll be on the radio in Seattle later today, on Dave Ross's KIRO-AM drive-time talk show, at 5 p.m., discussing this case:

White supremacist charged with selling machine guns

SEATTLE -- Federal agents arrested three men on gun and explosives charges Tuesday morning, including a white supremacist who once served time for plotting to kill Martin Luther King Jr.

Keith Gilbert, 65 - who also gained notoriety for spitting on a mentally retarded black girl in the mid-1980s - was taken into custody at his home in Seattle's University District, FBI spokeswoman Robbie Burroughs said. His associate, William D. Heinrich, 50, was arrested at a nearby home.

They were scheduled to make their first appearance at U.S. District Court Tuesday afternoon, along with a third Seattle man, John P. Hejna, 44, who was arrested at the home of relatives in Grays Harbor County.

A federal court complaint unsealed Tuesday said Gilbert, a former follower of late Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler who later became Butler's rival in the supremacy movement, sold fully automatic AK-47 machine guns and other weapons to a confidential informant working with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in the past two years. Gilbert, who has criminal convictions for assault, distributing drugs and receiving stolen property dating to 1966, was charged in the complaint with being a felon in possession of a firearm, possession of a machine gun and possession of an unregistered gun.

The story goes on to cite my book, In God's Country, which includes a couple of brief sections on Gilbert's activities in Idaho. Here's the text of the passages on pp. 52-53:

Then there were the Minutemen. Not only did they preach a more rabid style of anti-Communist paranoia than the Birch Society, their activities also manifested, for the first time, the violent undercurrent of these beliefs.

Led by a Missouri man named Robert DePugh, the Minutemen not only believed that government had been infiltrated at its highest levels by Communists, but that a Communist takeover was virtually inevitable; therefore, they told their believers, you should arm yourselves with whatever weaponry would be effective as a counterforce to strike back when the takeover occurred. DePugh, a onetime associate of Robert Welch before DePugh was dropped from the John Birch Society, also told his followers to harass "the enemy," and compiled at his headquarters a list of 1,500 people he identified as members of the "Communist hidden government," with the intent to assassinate them in the event of the Communist coup.

The Minutemen soon became associated with groups like Wesley Swift's Church of Jesus Christ Christian, a Christian Identity church located in Hollywood. Swift preached the "two-seed" brand of Identity, holding that not only are white people are the true Israelites and descendants of Adam, but that blacks, Asians, and other non-whites thus are "pre-Adamic" people without souls, and Jews are either descendants of Satan himself (the offspring of conjugal relations with Eve) or practitioners of a Satanic religion. Among Swift's more notable adherents: retired Col. William Potter Gale, a former MacArthur aide who eventually became a key figure in Posse Comitatus; and a quiet-spoken Lockheed engineer named Richard Girnt Butler.

Also in attendance at Swift's Sunday services was Keith Gilbert, a gunshop owner who also was a Minutemen member. Gilbert was arrested in 1965 and convicted for the theft of 1,400 pounds of TNT that he later said was part of a plot to plant a bomb under the stage of the Hollywood Palladium during an Anti-Defamation League convention, and to detonate it during the keynote speech by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. -- a plot only disrupted by his arrest.

And from pp. 54-55:

After Minuteman (and would-be Martin Luther King assassin) Keith Gilbert finished five years of his prison term at Alcatraz in 1970, he moved to northern Idaho, where one of his acquaintances from Wesley Swift's church lived; with his friend's help, he set up a retail shop called AR-YA Electronics. He scandalized the locals by driving about in a swastika-enscribed Volkswagen van. [Note: This was slightly incorrect. It was actually a Volkswagen "Thing."]

Gilbert's old acquaintance at Wesley Swift's Hollywood church, Richard Butler, had meanwhile taken over the reins of the congregation following Swift's death in 1971. Butler, on a visit to northern Idaho in the early '70s, decided it was time to fulfill his dream of creating an all-white "Aryan Homeland," and the Northwest was where he wanted to do it. In 1974, he purchased a 20-acre tract surrounded by forest near Hayden Lake and proceeded to move the Church of Jesus Christ-Christian from Hollywood to Idaho. Along the gravel roadway leading to the compound he built, Butler erected a sign bearing the group’s crest and the words designating the church's new home: "Aryan Nations."

Gilbert quickly became a high-profile member of the Aryan Nations. But Gilbert apparently always suspected Butler of selling him out on his 1965 arrest; the tension erupted in 1977 with a public falling-out between the two, punctuated by Gilbert accusing Butler of a lack of will in confronting the "Zionist Occupation Government," and Butler accusing Gilbert of being a welfare cheat (correctly; Gilbert had done another short prison stint for welfare fraud since coming to Idaho). Gilbert promptly started up his own organization, the Socialist Nationalist Aryan People's Party, and started handing out flyers. Among them: "Hitler was Elijah," a two-page handout that expounded on the Nazi leader's place in history as a Biblical prophet. Still other flyers were examples of the white supremacists' idea of humor.

It seemed as though nearly everyone in the Panhandle saw these flyers, and they left a vivid impression. I received one in the mail at the Sandpoint Daily Bee. It was an "Official Running Nigger Target," a shooting-range-style silhouette target of a sprinting black man, replete with huge Afro and monstrous lips. The highest score listed on the target was on its feet, implying that the figure could take a shot in the head and keep going. Eventually, Gilbert confessed to distributing the posters.

Gilbert also made an appearance in my second book, Death on the Fourth of July, because Gilbert also played a key role in bringing about passage Idaho's hate-crime law, one of the first such laws in the nation. (I also excerpted this portion in this post.)

The threats and intimidation came to a head in September 1982, thanks largely to one of the more troublesome hooligans attracted to northern Idaho by Butler’s church: an ex-convict named Keith Gilbert. He had moved to the region after doing time at California's San Quentin prison for having 1,500 pounds of dynamite at his Glendale home, which he later claimed was intended to assassinate Martin Luther King at a 1965 appearance in Los Angeles. Gilbert had been a follower of Butler’s in California, but shortly after moving to Idaho they had a dispute, and Gilbert attempted to set up his own white-supremacist organization. Gilbert, who later admitted responsibility for distributing the "running nigger" targets, then began his own campaign of threats and intimidation.

His chief target was a Coeur d'Alene family headed by a white woman named Connie Fort who had been married for several years to a black man and had three mixed-race children. Gilbert began by walking up to the eldest boy and spitting on him, saying: "Your life is condemned. You shall be served in front of the devil." Having discovered where Fort's family lived, Gilbert began driving by the home and shouting threats and obscenities at the children. He mailed an envelope containing a death threat for "race traitors" who engaged in "miscegenation." Another mailing contained a news clipping about the corpse of a black man found floating in Spirit Lake, shot through the head.

Police were initially hesitant to charge Gilbert, partly because Idaho law made racial slander only a misdemeanor. But as the threats escalated, he eventually was charged and convicted of misdemeanor assault, and fined $300 with a 45-day jail sentence. Gilbert merely laughed it off.

The rest of the community, however, did not. Local churches circulated petitions in support of Connie Fort's family and managed to gather hundreds of signatures. And Fort herself decided that something had to be done about the failure of Idaho law to adequately address this kind of hateful harassment. The previous year, a coalition of church leaders, city and law-enforcement officials, and businessmen from throughout the county had already formed, calling itself the Kootenai County Human Relations Task Force. As Fort's story gained publicity in the local press, the KCHRTF took up the task of gaining public support for changing the law. It organized town-hall meetings to discuss the issue, and found that its support was deep and broad; at a panel discussion set up by the Idaho Human Rights Commission in 1982, other participants included the Justice Department, the American Civil Liberties Union, and law-enforcement officers.

Out of those discussions, the Human Rights Commission composed legislation -- similar to a law just passed in Washington state, also largely in response to the activities emanating from the Aryan Nations -- that would make it a felony to intimidate or harass another person because of their race or religion, either with physical assault or with threatening words. The bill was introduced in the Idaho Legislature's 1983 with considerable fanfare, and its advocates claimed the support of over a hundred voluntary organizations in the state that supported its passage.

However, the bill encountered considerable opposition among legislators from the state’s notoriously conservative southern half. Many voiced concern that the law would trample on constitutional rights to religious freedom and free speech. Others accused the sponsors of secretly supporting the United Nations genocide convention. Richard Butler testified against it: "This bill would take away sovereign, inalienable rights of white Christians," he told legislators.

The tide slowly turned in the bill's favor, however, as the breadth of support for it became apparent. Kootenai County Prosecutor Glen Walker -- a conservative Republican -- traveled to Boise and patiently explained to lawmakers why the law was needed, particularly as a tool for dealing with a kind of crime they all recognized had deeply corrosive consequences for their community. Walker also shepherded several compromises to the legislation, including a clause that would specify it was not intended to imply support for the United Nations.

The coup de grace, however, was delivered by Keith Gilbert himself. He created a phony "Anti Defamation League" lobby, concocted a letterhead and a nonexistent leader named "Rabbi Schechter," and sent letters to all members of the Legislature under "Schechter's" signature voicing full support for the bill. Gilbert assumed that such "Jewish" support would inspire legislators to oppose the measure -- but his ruse was discovered and publicized instead. Angered by his brazenness, legislators rushed to support the bill, and it wound up passing handily.

Since those days, Gilbert moved to Seattle and ceased the high-profile activism on behalf of white supremacism. Instead, as this article by Nina Shapiro described in detail in the Seattle Weekly a few years ago, Gilbert has been in the employ of two of Seattle's most notorious landlords, Hugh and Drake Sisley. He's been working as a thuggish enforcer for them:

To say that Keith Gilbert has a shady past is something of an understatement. In the 1980s, when he lived in Idaho, he was convicted of 35 counts of welfare fraud and state-income-tax evasion. While he was lying to the government, according to court documents, Gilbert was also whipping up hate as a member of the Aryan Nation, which he left to form his own white supremacist organization. He had a particular objection to an adoption agency that sometimes placed minority kids with white parents. In July 1982, he almost ran down a black adopted child--one of several incidents that earned him a federal conviction for violating the Fair Housing Act.

It is best to keep Gilbert's record in mind when you hear him declare that he's not a property manager for brothers Hugh and Drake Sisley, as is widely believed, but an agent for a nonprofit, religious "residents' club." And his ties to the far right, which he denies, make sense in light of his tendency to use lawsuits, the way the militia use liens, as a form of harassment--employed, in Gilbert's case, against tenants and city officials who give him problems. In the words of one city official, Gilbert and the Sisleys like to "run roughshod over people constantly."

... Then, when it comes to the Sisleys, there's also the intimidation factor. The brothers--particularly Hugh--tend to strike back at anyone who challenges them, be they tenants, attorneys, or city officials. Clay Thompson, a DCLU inspector, recalls his first dealing with Hugh Sisley some eight years ago when he came out to one property to find that Sisley had dug up a sewer line, leaving a rank open pit. Thompson issued an emergency violation order to fill the pit. "The next thing I know, I'm being sued for trespassing and violating the rights of tenants," he says. In the years that followed, he says, "It seemed that every time I issued a notice of violation, along would come a lawsuit." None have yet been successful, but they have been what Thompson calls a "nuisance"; even frivolous lawsuits gobble up time and money.

Gilbert, who has elevated the lawsuit-as-harassment to a high art, has proven enormously ingenious at flouting landlord-tenant law. In 1994, the 59-year-old former convict registered incorporation records with the secretary of state for "Acme Residents Club," described in its charter as an organization devoted to "providing services which include but are not limited to decent and affordable housing."

A portly man with a fuzzy gray beard and long ponytail who walks with a cane, Gilbert takes a reasonable tone as he gives a tour of some Acme buildings. (He claims he can't recall how many there are.) "These houses are in deplorable condition," he concedes after unabashedly showing off cracked floors, moldy ceilings, and grease-covered walls. But he portrays himself as trying to clean up buildings that were in even worse shape before Acme took them over; many, he says, are former drug houses. "Whatever money we get, we put back into the buildings."

He also says that Acme is trying to help its residents--many of whom are disabled, prison parolees, or former alcohol and drug addicts. "We function a little like how Oxford House works," he says, referring to the national chain of group homes for former addicts. The people who live in his house, therefore, are "members" or "guests" (not tenants) who pay a "membership fee" (not rent) that allows them to live in an Acme building. As for the religious component, Gilbert says it is nondenominational. "We advocate that people have faith," he says.

Some tenants do feel that, with his willingness to shelter all comers, Gilbert has done them a service. One woman released last month from prison says that Gilbert (and several people who work with him) took her in when few others would. "Knowing the position I was in, for them to reach out and help me means a great deal." Gilbert also let her hold off on paying rent until she got her first paycheck from a new job.

On the other hand, she continues, "they do need to put a little more work into the buildings. In a way I feel like they're taking advantage of people who can't complain and who have nowhere else to go. They can also raise the rent. My room is half the size of other rooms in the house, and my rent [at $350] is $50 to $70 more."

What's more, Gilbert apparently feels that if you're a "guest," you can be evicted at will, you cannot give permission for housing inspectors to enter the property, and you have no right to expect such amenities as a lock on your door--or even a door at all.

A lawsuit in federal court ties together several such cases. Twice, according to his own legal pleadings, Gilbert locked out people that city officials considered to be tenants. And Gilbert once removed what DCLU called the entry door to an apartment (Gilbert says it was a door to an interior passageway), ostensibly to paint the door jamb.

An array of city officials sanctioned him for such behavior: Prosecutors charged him with "harassing or retaliating against a tenant" for one lock-out; DCLU issued an emergency order to replace the missing door.

Gilbert's response in November 1994 was to file a federal lawsuit. Representing himself, as is his custom, he named seemingly everyone he could think of, including City Attorney Mark Sidran, the entire City Council, several DCLU inspectors, and a police officer. The charge: racketeering. By his reasoning, the conspiracy against him violated his right "not be made a real estate property owner against his wishes because such property ownership would violate the beliefs of the plaintiff which prohibit such property ownership." He says he is a "Nazarite," an archaic term used once by ancient Christians and Hebrews.

Gilbert also says that he is too poor to afford legal filing fees, that he is disabled with chronic bronchitis, that he is both black and Cajun. Indeed, in the federal suit and elsewhere, he claims racial discrimination by city officials.

The court ultimately proved unimpressed with Gilbert's claims. In two separate recommendations to the court considering motions to dismiss the case, US Magistrate Judge Philip Sweigert attacked Gilbert's credibility. At one point taking up Gilbert's claim to be both black and Cajun, Sweigert noted that Cajuns are descendants of the Acadians, mostly French immigrants who settled in Louisiana. "It goes without saying that the Acadians were white," Sweigert wrote. More important, he concluded, "It appears that the purpose of this incorporation [of Acme Residents Club] as a fraternal organization is to avoid the application of landlord-tenant laws."

I'm not a big fan of "three strikes"-type laws, but if ever they were needed, it would be for cases like Keith Gilbert.