Why and How SeaWorld Lost the Roundtable Debate Badly

Finally, SeaWorld decided to talk.

It did not go well for them.

After months of debate over orca captivity stirred up by the documentary Blackfish, and months of the world's largest keeper of captive killer whales refusing to participate, the company was finally persuaded to sit down at a table and engage the issue with their critics, in the form of a remarkable roundtable discussion sponsored by Voice of San Diego and titled, "What SeaWorld and 'Blackfish' Mean for San Diego."

The roundtable, which was held Thursday in San Diego (you can watch the entire discussion here), featured SeaWorld veterinarian Todd Robeck, a senior animal trainer at SeaWorld named Kristi Burtis, former UC San Diego professor Susan Gray Davis, who has analyzed the park's business model, and Dr. Naomi Rose of the Animal Welfare Institute, a veteran orca biologist. It was hosted by Scott Lewis and Lisa Halverstadt of Voice of San Diego.

Getting them to even engage in an open debate was an achievement. When Blackfish aired on CNN last year, SeaWorld refused to even come on air to discuss the film and its contents. Rather than expose itself to open questions, it chose to counter the film with an in-house spin campaign that revolved around a dishonest website it titled, "The Truth About Blackfish."

But more recent developments -- including pending legislation now in the backrooms at the California Legislature that would outlaw orca performances in the state and require SeaWorld to begin returning its orcas to the wild -- seem to have had their effect, and so when Voice of San Diego suggested this forum, SeaWorld finally deigned to open up and finally deal with the debate.

The company probably regrets this now. If you break down the hour-and-a-half discussion, it becomes fairly evident why SeaWorld has so assiduously avoided an actual debate over the facts with their critics, because whenever their representatives tried to make some kind of factual point, they either were blown out of the water by their critics' tart factual counters, or they wound up looking foolish as they fumbled about with charts and graphs.

They fumbled about when confronted with a question about the negative health effects of captivity for orcas. They had to admit that they had published misleading material. Their claims to offering "education" to children and substantive research in the scientific community were exposed as shams. 

In the end, the best they could muster was a strangely emotional appeal to their audience's children and the ostensible benefits that SeaWorld offers them, marking an odd nadir in the debate. It seemed particularly ironic, given that SeaWorld is prone to accusing their critics -- who were resolutely fact-oriented throughout the discussion -- of relying on emotional appeals.

Moreover, on the really central questions in the debate, SeaWorld came off as incompetent and dishonest. The apotheosis of this came when Robeck -- who is chief of SeaWorld's breeding program -- evaded the seemingly softball question: "Is it really your contention that there are no health effects to being in captivity?" [The video atop the post features this moment.] Robeck first attempted to deflect disingenuously, and then spent the next several minutes pulling out charts and graphs that he claimed proved that, with their improvements in the care for the animals, their orcas lived as long as orcas in the wild now -- all of which Rose deftly punctured in a brief and devastating retort.

There were many other telling moments in the debate. Another key question -- SeaWorld's claim that its "animal ambassadors" provide a unique educational moment for children -- came fairly early in the discussion, and what was revealing was how shallow and facile SeaWorld's claims were in the face of hardnosed academic findings that their "education" was really just a facade for marketing the park and its experience, while the truth about animals such as orcas and dolphins is distorted and sometimes outright false.



Similarly, SeaWorld's oft-touted claims that it conducts research that benefits orcas in the wild too (see Sam Lipman's superb debunking for more on this) was trotted out, and promptly became a fiasco when Rose pointed out that, for a company that holds the largest collection of captive orcas in the world (not to mention one that is awash in money), a mere 50 research papers in 50 years' time is an output that can only be described in one word: "pathetic."




The sharpest illustration of the dubiousness of SeaWorld's claims came during the discussion of orca dorsal fins. SeaWorld has claimed [see No. 42] that "Nearly one-quarter of adult male southern resident killer whales in the wild have collapsing, collapsed or bent dorsal fins." Yet anyone who has studied the southern resident killer whales -- here's a complete catalog, so you can see this for yourself -- knows that not a single one of these whales has a collapsed fin.

The study that SeaWorld cites, in fact, is a study by Dr. Ingrid Visser of a single small population found in the waters of New Zealand, and who are not even remotely related to southern residents. And even then, as Melissa Cronin at The Dodo explained, it grossly misinterpreted that dataset: "Only one orca had a collapsed fin in the study, but SeaWorld confused fin abnormalities with collapsed fins in an attempt to make the public think that dorsal fin collapse is normal among orca whales. The park also neglects to use updated research that has been published in the years since by Visser and others."

Appropriately, Visser was outraged at the misuse of her research: “I hope, that as a scientist yourself and as the Director of Research at SeaWorld,” Visser wrote in an e-mail to SeaWorld's research Dr. Judy St. Leger, “you can see how wrong this misrepresentation is – not only to inform the public by distorting the facts but also misrepresenting the data by not presenting it in context.”
/> And sure enough, in Thursday's roundtable, Todd Robeck -- at the end of a robust discussion of orca dorsals in which the veterinarian also mistakenly claimed the fins are made of cartilage, then retracted that when called on it -- acknowledged directly that this information was "misleading," and appeared to suggest that SeaWorld regretted making the claim.





Yet even though Robeck acknowledged directly that the claim by SeaWorld was false and misleading (and also indicated an astonishing ignorance of the wild orca's natural history), the claim remains up on the SeaWorld site. Anyone visiting "The Truth About Blackfish" even today (being June 7) will still read this false claim in the "Blackfish Analysis" (not to mention the risible assertion that there's no evidence wild orcas live with their mothers their entire lives -- see No. 24).

Finally, the debate became truly telling when the debate turned to the question of "water work" displays in which trainers get into the water with orcas -- something that SeaWorld is currently forbidden from doing, per the order from the Occupational Health and Safety Administration that followed the death of Dawn Brancheau, the focus of Blackfish.

This included a brief moment of hilarity when Burtis, at the end of an enthusiastic rant about how totally awesome it is to work for SeaWorld, because everyone always asks how they can get her job, cluelessly opines: "I don't know too many jobs where people are asking, 'Hey, how do I get a job writing for Voice of San Diego?'"

To which host Scott Lewis quickly retorts: "All the time." The audience bursts out in laughter.

Then, Burtis' enthusiasm is turned on its head, offered as evidence that, indeed, SeaWorld really is not about education by Dr. Davis, who offers some keen insight into just how important these shows are to SeaWorld's entire business model.

As she explains, the shows with trainers are the essence of SeaWorld's brand, not any "education" or "research" or "animal rescue" fig leafs (worth noting: SeaWorld has never yet participated directly in the rescue of a wild killer whale, except when it was taking one captive). What SeaWorld is selling is not an understanding of the animals, but a spectacle -- the jaw-dropping sight of seeing a relatively tiny human mastering these gigantic creatures and seemingly controlling them.  



After all these telling blows accumulated, the SeaWorld spokespeople were only left, in the end, with an emotional appeal. And even that failed.

It came at the closing, as everyone gave their final thoughts. As they had throughout, Rose and Davis were calm and thoughtful and referenced the science and business acumen behind their positions. But when Burtis and Robeck took their turns, it was get-out-your-hankies time.

First, Burtis referenced the plight of one of her admirers whose fragile health and well-being were bolstered by her visits to SeaWorld and the time she spent with killer whales, suggesting that the animals had special healing qualities (something we thought only the hippies and psychics believed). And then Robeck became severely choked up as he tried to explain how special SeaWorld is to children -- pulling out a picture of his 9-week-old son on his iPhone at one point -- and then asserting, in the face of a mountain of evidence to the contrary (not to mention a paucity of substantiating evidence), that the knowledge gained from keeping orcas captive would be critical to helping wild orcas survive.




It was all strangely maudlin. But in the end, it was probably fitting. Because that was the best SeaWorld had, and it remains probably the only card they have left to play.

At some point, the heart-tugging narratives are going to have to contend with the cold reality coming their way. As Dr. Rose noted, "The market will speak." The truth is getting out, and no amount of tears or smears will change that. SeaWorld can either come to terms with the reality coming their way, or they can crawl back into their hidey hole and watch as their brand name goes the way of the Edsel.

Sovereign Citizen’ Is Suspected in Georgia Courthouse Shooting

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]


A man described by authorities as an antigovernment “sovereign citizen” entered a courthouse in suburban Atlanta this morning armed with multiple guns and explosives and opened fire. The man was shot and killed by sheriff’s deputies shortly after wounding one officer in the leg.

Dennis Marx

According to Sheriff Duane Piper, the man, Dennis Marx of Cumming, Ga., drove up to the courthouse in his SUV and emerged from the vehicle with several guns and some explosives, and reportedly wearing a bulletproof vest and a gas mask. As he approached the entrance, he threw out homemade smoke grenades that briefly covered his approach with orange smoke, as well as pepper spray grenades and homemade spike strips.

Forsyth County deputy Daniel Rush came out to confront Marx and was shot in the leg. Then, as Marx proceeded into the building, he was met with a hail of gunfire and was killed.

The wounded deputy, a 25-year veteran, was taken to a local hospital and treated. Sheriff Piper praised him, saying Rush’s actions stalled Marx long enough for SWAT team officers and other deputies to arrive in place and protect the people working inside.

“It would be a guess to think how many lives he saved had he not engaged him right there,” Piper said. “Mr. Marx’s intention was to get inside that front door and to take hostages.”

Piper said that Marx was well known as a “sovereign citizen” to deputies at the time of the attack. Marx had a long-running lawsuit against the sheriff’s office over alleged unconstitutional raids on his home, and was due in court Friday morning to face marijuana and weapons charges.

Marx apparently had been living for the past week in a motel. When deputies went to his home, they found evidence that it had been rigged to blow up when law enforcement entered. Piper told a WSB-TV reporter he was confident the place had been set up as an explosive trap.

“We are quite certain it’s booby-trapped with the purpose of killing law enforcement,” he said. Piper noted that it appeared Marx had been planning the assault for some time.

Marx had been in trouble with sheriff’s deputies since at least 2011, according to the Forsyth News, when he was arrested on marijuana charges, as well as weapons possession charges. He had been suing the sheriff’s department for alleged civil rights violations and use of excessive force, and had filed papers in the suit using pseudo-legal language common to “sovereign citizen” court actions.

An amendment to the complaint he filed on April 2 alleged that a Forsyth deputy had caused a death in his family by setting events in motion that led to it.

“Plaintiff also has information and receipts to verify his statements to defendants regarding the seizure of plaintiff’s family’s property, leaving plaintiff and plaintiff’s family without the means to properly protect themselves and/or relocate, as is their Constitutional right, leading directly or indirectly to the death and/or murder of one member of plaintiff’s family,” the motion read.

A woman identified by WSB-TV as Marx’s attorney said she had recently withdrawn from the case because Marx had been dissatisfied with her representation. She said she had asked Marx to take a psychological evaluation, but he had refused.

PBS’s Bonnie Erbe Accepts Award from Anti-Immigrant Group CIS

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

Bonnie Erbe, the longtime host of the Public Broadcasting Service’s “To The Contrary” program, has long been a proponent of dubious claims that immigration depletes natural resources and worsens global warming, as well as an apologist for the anti-immigrant Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). So it was not really a surprise when CIS awarded Erbe its annual journalism prize this year for her “reporting on immigration’s effects on health care, poverty, and natural resources, as well as on birth tourism.”

Erbe, who was given the award Tuesday at a gathering at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., told the audience in her acceptance speech that she “no longer” considers herself a progressive, “because I don’t believe the progressives really support the environment.”

Erbe’s speech explicitly acknowledged the coordination of anti-immigrant activism among various organizations associated with CIS, including the “greenwashing” group Progressives For Immigration Reform (PFIR), and Numbers USA, which along with CIS and another nativist outfit, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, are all part of a network devoted to opposing immigration.

Erbe acknowledged that she works closely with CIS and Numbers USA, and openly accepts their frequently dubious studies as accurate: “We work with them on many projects,” she said, praising them for their growing influence, “shown by the growth of their website and email list they run a very necessary organization with now more than 2 million, I believe.”

She explained her thinking on immigration, saying she doesn’t have a problem with immigrants as people, but as a mass phenomenon: “Anyway, immigrants are fabulous. Immigrants make the best Americans. They work the hardest for the least amount of money. They contribute so much to this country,” she said. “But in the journalistic community, if you dare raise any negative impact of mass immigration that we have now, both legal and illegal, you are shunted aside as some kind of strange person who has – you know, has a very strange approach to reporting.”

Erbe said she became concerned about immigration mostly as an environmental issue, and came to part ways with liberals over the issue of overpopulation, “because they support open-border immigration, pretty much.”

“I certainly came of age as a progressive, but I am no longer a progressive because I don’t believe the progressives really support the environment, and to me, that’s the most important issue. If we don’t deal with climate change and human impact on the planet, there’s not going to be a planet in 50 years, it’s my personal belief,” she said. “And you can’t – you say that in journalistic or political circles, and people look at you cross-eyed. And some – and we get objections from viewers sometimes. We also get great, you know, emails saying, thank you for doing this; I have – I hear this nowhere else on TV. But we also get people who say – you know, call me bad names and say that our – that begins with R – and call us out for just reporting what are the facts.”

Those facts, as Erbe sees it:

We’re not dealing with the fact that we are the major contributors to greenhouse gases and what we do – and this is our cultural disadvantage, but when we do take immigrants from developing nations who have very small carbon footprints, we turn them into the rest of us, who have huge carbon footprints, and turn them into greater contributors to global warming.

And we need to do something somewhere. We’re not doing anything on any of the fronts. Immigration is just one of the fronts where we need to start controlling thing – things, but again, is anybody going to listen? Does anybody care? No.

This is not particularly new for Erbe. In the past, she has both praised CIS and its “studies”, and has ardently promoted the view (also long promoted by FAIR and CIS’s founder, John Tanton) that immigration causes environmental degradation in the United States. Indeed, much of Tanton’s work has entailed attempts to transform immigration into an environmental issue.

And Erbe noted at the end of her speech that she was donating the proceeds from her award to PFIR, whose main purpose as a “greenwashing” outfit is to argue against immigration on environmental grounds. Erbe appears to have bought into their claims whole.

The claim, for instance, that immigrants worsen carbon emissions, as ThinkProgress has explained, is based almost entirely on CIS studies that employ “deeply flawed methodology”:

The report claims that a person’s CO2 emissions is directly related to his or her personal income — so a person making $110,000 per year will emit 10 percent more carbon than a person who earns $100,000 per year under the report’s methodology. Thus, because the report claims that each Mexican immigrant earns 53.2 percent of the average U.S. resident, it claims that these immigrants must also produce 53.2 percent of the carbon emissions.

But this is simply absurd. If such a relationship actually did exist, that would mean that Mitt Romney, who earned $21.6 million in 2010 — or more than 600 times the average annual income according to the CIS report — also must have produced 600 times the CO2 emissions. That’s enough of a carbon footprint to fuel over 2,200 vehicles or power more than 1,400 homes for an entire year. Not even John McCain owns that many houses.

Think Progress also notes that data actually demonstrates that immigrants produce lower carbon emissions than their native-born citizen counterparts. “And as CAP Senior Fellow Andrew Light told ThinkProgress, even if we could suddenly remove the entire carbon impact created by immigrants, it would only decrease the U.S.’s carbon emissions by 7.32 percent in a good year. Clearly, immigrants are not to blame for the U.S.’s large climate footprint.”

Of course, that has not stopped CIS and its nativist cohorts from pointing the finger of blame, nor has it stopped Erbe from blithely aiding in that process. These views were adroitly satirized by Stephen Colbert a couple of years ago.

“I say, why stop with global warming?” he asked in a segment on the CIS claims. “There are so many problems on which conservatives and liberals can come together to blame immigrants. … So, liberals, conservatives, let’s make sure America continues to be a country people strive to come to, by kicking out the people who came here.”

Attorney General Revives Domestic Terrorism Group, and Far Right Goes Wild

A photoshopped image of Attorney General Eric Holder at a right-wing conspiracist website

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

After letting a special unit devoted to monitoring domestic terrorism fall dormant following the Al Qaeda attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced this week that it was reviving the group. The Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee will focus on extremists motivated by antigovernment and racial hatred, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement Tuesday.

Predictably, pundits from the extreme conspiracist right, particularly antigovernment “Patriot” groups, worked themselves into a frenzy over the announcement, warning their followers that a “war on the white man” was about to come down from the Obama administration. A similar reaction greeted the 2009 leak of a report from the Department of Homeland Security that focused on the domestic radical right, with right-wing groups describing it as an attack on the political conservatives.

In his statement announcing the DOJ committee’s revival, Holder noted that this decision comes after more than a decade of focus on the threat of international terrorists, while a number of recent incidents have underscored that they are not the only threat. “We must also concern ourselves with the continued danger we face from individuals within our own borders who may be motivated by a variety of other causes from anti-government animus to racial prejudice,” Holder said.

Several news accounts noted the move appeared to be in response to such incidents as the April murder of three people at Jewish institutions near Kansas City, Mo., the bombing of the Boston Marathon last year, a neo-Nazi attack on a Sikh temple in 2012, and a number of similar attacks. Non-Islamic domestic terrorist activity has clearly picked up in the years since Barack Obama was first elected in 2008.

“We’ve been pushing DOJ to devote more resources to domestic terrorism for a long time, so we’re delighted that the Attorney General has taken this step,” said SPLC President and CEO Richard Cohen, who recently wrote a column for MSNBC describing how the committee was meant to meet on 9/11 but never did again.

The response was considerably less measured, however, when it came to right-wing media, particularly pundits inclined to promoting conspiracy theories. One far-right website, run by documentarian Pat Dollard, headlined the news story: “Holder Mobilizes Group To Wage War On The White Man.”

Over at conspiracist pundit Alex Jones’ Infowars website, there was little doubt about Holder’s intentions: “In reality, Holder’s task force will undoubtedly focus on the Obama administration’s political enemies, mainly returning military veterans, conservatives and those who identify with the Tea Party. Such groups have been increasingly linked to terrorism by multiple federal agencies. … Given the documented history of the federal government’s involvement in facilitating terrorism, the administration will likely do whatever it can to create the necessary scenario to bolster its executive power.”

The conspiracist website The Daily Slave was similarly hysterical, adding some personal vilification into the mix by claiming that Holder “only obtained his job because of his Black skin and his support of government financed terrorism,” and suggesting that he had been “accused of direct involvement in the Oklahoma City bombing back in the mid 1990s through his role in the Clinton regime.” (The only such accusations came from the extreme right and they were utterly baseless.)

“Simply put, this clown is an evil lawyer terrorist who should be tried for high crimes and treason,” The Daily Slave concluded. “His announcement of a task force to stop ‘homegrown’ terrorists is a joke when he himself is a terrorist criminal. This savage should be rotting in a prison cell.”

Another conservative website called The Daily Dose published a post claiming that Obama administration officials already “exhibit behavior consistent with that of despotic tyrants.”

“One of the chief offenders, Eric Holder, has just announced that he is coming after everyday American patriots, especially those who use the Internet,” it read, claiming that Holder is using recent terror incidents “as the premise to target both Americans and our right to freely communicate over the Internet.”

“One can expect that the domestic group comprised of those evil racist heterosexual redneck Christian veteran gun-owning crackas will be occupying most of the top positions and garnering most of the attention,” it concluded.

The commenters at these sites, just as predictably, were even more wild-eyed.  “Holder needs [to be] executed for treason and murder of the American People and their blood bought Constitution,” wrote “propel7” at Infowars. “He is nothing more than a degenerate NAZI. His end will be the same as Mussolini, at the hands of the People. Shove this up your Homo-grown ass.”

At Glenn Beck’s The Blaze, where the reportage was relatively restrained, commenter “timeryder” wrote: “This regime is now justifiably terrified that attempts to overthrow them and re-establish our constitutional government and the rule of law may occur. A nazi/Stalin regime like rule is about to begin where people will be arrested and detained without evidence but on suspicion alone. Unlike Germany, there are no allies to come to our rescue to stop it.”

While it has so far remained confined to far-right conspiracist sites, this sort of hysteria is reminiscent of the response in 2009 when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a bulletin to law-enforcement agencies warning of recruitment of returning veterans by far-right extremist organizations and its potential to enable domestic-terrorist attacks. Then, a number of right-wing pundits from the mainstream denounced the bulletin for supposedly “targeting” veterans and smearing them, a narrative that dominated media reportage despite the efforts of then-DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano to defuse the situation. Eventually, Napolitano caved in, withdrew the report, and publicly criticized its authors.

That response resulted, as the SPLC later reported, in the gutting of the DHS’s section on right-wing domestic terrorism and the retirement of the veteran analyst who headed it up, Daryl Johnson, from the agency. Most of the rest of his team, which focused on non-Islamic domestic terrorism soon followed.

As it soon emerged, the DHS bulletin in fact anticipated a substantial resurgence in right-wing extremism and its associated violence that began in 2009 and has only begun to subside slightly in the past year. The report also was somewhat prescient in accurately noting that some of the more lethal of these extremist recruits would be military veterans, an observation that became manifest in such incidents as the attack on a Sikh temple in 2012 by a neo-Nazi who was recruited while in the Army, and last year’s arrest of a group of Georgia radicals who organized a far-right militia unit while in the Army, eventually murdering two people in an attempt to hide their plans to commit terrorist acts.

Traffic on I-70 Halted over Obama Effigy Hanging from Highway Overpass

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

Some person or group in rural Missouri with an apparent hatred of President Obama managed to briefly shut down morning traffic on Interstate 70 on Monday by hanging an effigy of the president from an overpass.

According to local news reports, the effigy – a mannequin wearing a rubber Obama mask – was spotted hanging from an I-70 overpass on Lefholz Road, near Grain Valley in the rural outskirts of Kansas City, at about 5:30 a.m. Deputies responded to remove the display and found what they feared might be a bomb attached to it.

“The item that we had, we thought possibly could have been explosive, so we went ahead and shut down I-70 is both directions to ensure that if it was explosive there was nothing that was going to cause a hazard to any passerbys, and once we removed that from the scene we opened up I-70 almost immediately,” Sgt. Ronda Montgomery, spokesperson for the sheriff’s office, told reporters.

The item turned out not to be a bomb, and the interstate was reopened after a couple of hours. The sheriff’s office continued investigating the incident.

“We are talking with neighbors and canvassing the neighborhood,” Montgomery said. “We are putting the pieces of the puzzle together.”

Political science professor Max Skidmore of the University of Missouri-Kansas City told WDAF-TV that political dissent is protected by the First Amendment but this action may have crossed the line by threatening the president. “It’s some person who is simply vicious and whose hatred overwhelms what little good sense he or she may have,” he said.

Open Carry Texas’ Tactics Too Extreme Even for the NRA

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

The spectrum of gun rights groups runs the gamut. But you know a gun group has gone too far when even the National Rifle Association is criticizing it. (Update: The NRA has retracted its criticism – more below.)

That’s the position that Open Carry Texas – which believes citizens ought to be able to pack any kind of heat in public and in just about any kind of setting, including bars and political conventions – now finds itself in.
Open Carry Texas first attracted public notice last week when the group’s armed members were banned from Chipotle franchises as well as Chili’s and Sonic restaurants after different chapters of the group entered eateries around the state bearing assault rifles and other firearms. That was followed by a series of subsequent episodes that upset local Texans, who accused the group’s members of bullying tactics and intimidation.

All that negative press coverage in a state like Texas appears to have motivated the NRA to express concern about the nature of the protests. The group, which supports “open carry” for handguns, on Monday issued a statement criticizing Open Carry Texas members for having “recently crossed the line from enthusiasm to downright foolishness.”

“[W]hile unlicensed open carry of long guns is also typically legal in most places, it is a rare sight to see someone sidle up next to you in line for lunch with a 7.62 rifle slung across his chest, much less a whole gaggle of folks descending on the same public venue with similar arms,” the statement reads.

It continues: “Let’s not mince words, not only is it rare, it’s downright weird and certainly not a practical way to go normally about your business while being prepared to defend yourself. To those who are not acquainted with the dubious practice of using public displays of firearms as a means to draw attention to oneself or one’s cause, it can be downright scary. It makes folks who might normally be perfectly open-minded about firearms feel uncomfortable and question the motives of pro-gun advocates.”

There was good reason to question the motives of at least some of those involved, it turns out. A Marine Corps veteran and gun rights supporter, James Henry, got into an argument with Open Carry Texas supporters on Friday while filming one of their demonstrations in Dallas. He was followed and verbally harassed by members of the group, who videotaped him. Now the man is facing death threats and has to himself carry a weapon at all times.

“One said you’re going to wish you had a gun, boy, when I fill you with holes,” Henry told a Dallas TV station.” “I’m being used on this one side as a proponent for gun control which I don’t agree with and also being used as a proponent that I’m some crazy left wing guy, which I’m not,” he said. He just happens to find the Open Carry tactics repugnant: “That is not being ambassadors for responsible gun owners to support gun rights.”

That was followed by another recent incident in which a group of Open Carry Texas supporters showed up fully armed to protest a women’s anti-gun violence organization, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America (MDA), at its regular meeting at a Dallas-area restaurant.

A spokesperson for MDA said that the four mothers who comprised the gathering were all inside the Blue Mesa Grill when the Open Carry advocates “pull[ed] up in the parking lot and start[ed] getting guns out of their trunks,” and then waited in the parking lot for the women to come out. The women remained inside instead, fearful of “inciting a riot.” The Open Carry advocates reportedly shifted their operation to a nearby Hooters after a couple hours.

MDA issued a statement decrying the Open Carry advocates as “gun bullies,” noting that the four mothers and remaining restaurant customers were “terrified by what appeared to be an armed ambush.”

The outrageous antics of Open Carry Texas’ supporters provoked a counter-protest at one of the group’s suburban demonstrations in North Richland Hills, where a man named Glynn Wilcox and his son showed up with signs opposing the group’s “intimidation.”

“While everybody has the opportunity to carry open arms, carrying them in a front forward sling and making a scene of it isn’t showing you’re trying to get rights,” said Wilcox. “You’re being a bully.”

Open Carry Texas’ stance amid all this controversy has been defiant. Rather than scale back its aggressive tactics, the group’s leaders recently called on delegates to arrive fully armed at the Texas state Republican convention later this summer.

As for the NRA, Open Carry Texas’ spokesmen thumbed their noses at the much larger organization and announced on Facebook that they were tearing up their memberships.

“It is unfortunate that an organization that claims to be dedicated to the preservation of gun rights would attack another organization fighting so hard for those rights in Texas,” it said. “Already, OCT members are posting pictures of themselves cutting up their life membership cards. If they do not retract their disgusting and disrespectful comments, OCT will have no choice but to withdraw its full support of the NRA and establish relationships with other gun rights organizations that fight for ALL gun rights, instead of just paying them lip service the way the NRA appears to be doing.”

Update: Media Matters reported Tuesday evening that the NRA’s top lobbyist, Chris Cox, retracted the group’s criticism of Open Carry Texas:

Cox said that the statement was “a mistake” and that “it shouldn’t have happened,” adding “our job is not to criticize the lawful behavior of fellow gun owners.” Cox also blamed the statement on a “staffer” who Cox said “expressed his personal opinion.” Referencing media interest in the statement, Cox termed it a “distraction.”

Alex Jones Says Army Training Center Is Part of ‘Giant Buildup for War with the American People’

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

Alex Jones thinks the federal government is training military personnel to round up Americans and put them in concentration camps and could launch this dastardly plan at any moment.

Of course, he’s been saying that for a long time. It’s just that now, he says, they really are doing it. Really.

Almost since the very beginning of the “militia” movement in the 1990s, antigovernment “Patriot” movement followers have avidly subscribed to the theory that the United States government, under the grasp of the nefarious New World Order, was on the verge of swooping down on middle America with guns and SWAT teams, imposing martial law, rounding up conservative dissidents and gun owners, placing them in concentration camps, and imposing a dictatorship on the country.

Even back in the ‘90s, this conspiracy theory had been around for awhile, having first originated in the 1980s with the Posse Comitatus movement. And although no such plot or roundup has ever come to pass in the thirty years or so that the paranoia about it has been around, it has remained one of the most popular and enduring “Patriot” theories. Moreover, one of its most popular and steadfast progenitors has been Jones, the Texas-based radio talk show host, and his “Infowars” media organization. Jones has been spinning tales about FEMA concentration camps since the 1990s, and he continues doing so today, drawing in a large audience from the far left as well.

This spring, however, he has picked up the pace of his rhetoric about “martial law” and its imminent imposition on an unwitting American public. The impetus for their frenetic coverage was the construction of a “fake city” within an Army training center in Virginia, designed to give troops the chance to practice urban warfare in a realistic setting. Such urban-warfare centers are nothing new, and have been incorporated into military training for American soldiers, as well as others around the world, for many years.

The Army and its Asymmetric Warfare Group (AWG) proudly announced the opening of the new Virginia training center early this year, noting that among the features of the center are facilities that soldiers might encounter in an urban environment, including “a mosque, a soccer stadium, a subway station complete with subway cars and a train station with real rail cars.”

AWG Commander Col. John P. Petkosek said the center was designed to help identify shortfalls in its training for soldiers: “This is the place where we can be creative, where we can come up with solutions for problems that we don’t even know we have yet,” Petkosek said.

This was deemed threatening, however, by Jones and the Infowars crew, who began reporting in February, rather breathlessly, that the military was “training for martial law” at the facility.

“The public may not know the problem yet, because they [the government] haven’t yet executed the false flag event that they’ll use to openly activate martial law,” said reporter David Knight, “but the military has been creating scenarios where they can justify a move against small-town America for quite some time.” “And they’ve made it clear that their enemy is gun owners, veterans, those who want a small limited government, and Christians,” he continued.

Infowars reporters took a brief tour of the facility and shot some video as well. Among the items that disturbed them was the appearance of what looks like a small Christian church, claiming that this was supposed to be the “mosque” that the Army had described. But in fact the mosque is a separate, much larger building at the center, and in fact only a few hundred yards away from the small church.

Infowars is also highlighting another such center, this time built for the U.S. Marine Corps at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. This story prompted Jones to deliver one of his signature paranoid rants, in which he wrapped together a host of his favorite conspiracies into one grand scheme:

JONES: It’s sensational that we’ve gotten these secret Marine Corps documents confirmed, that they’re training to take on, basically, everybody’s granddaddy – anybody who’s independent and in a rural area. Globalists always, or any takeover group, takes over the cities first, then the suburbs, then the small towns, then the rural areas. Then they fan out to subdue and dominate. And the entire Pentagon program – the Emergency Centers Establishment Act, the Rural Affairs Commission that is under the Pentagon and Homeland Security – is putting plainclothes troops in every town and city, literally spying on people. And then bringing in the federal money to buy off the town leadership.

And they are training to take on small towns everywhere, because they know when they order the gun confiscation, when they order the 80 percent taxation, when they order this they’re going to take over the town centers and control the roads. …

So this is the giant buildup for war with the American people.

This was followed by a long segment on Jones’ May 18 show in which Knight, as Jones’ guest, laid out more “groundbreaking” revelations about the Virginia center, the entirety of which turned out to be quotes from military strategists and psychologists about dealing with asymmetric warfare abroad. Jones and Knight promptly twisted the quotes around to make them appear to refer to actions against American citizens.

That’s a pretty typical day at Infowars, where they’re constantly on the lookout for new ways of stoking paranoia and feeding the conspiracy beast.

Jerome Corsi Wants to Impeach Obama over Immigration Reform

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

 
Jerome Corsi, the right-wing conspiracy theorist who helped put “birtherism” on the map, is yet again calling for President Obama to be impeached. This time he’s upset about immigration reform.

Back in September, Corsi and TeaParty.org put out a video demanding Obama be removed from office. The main pretext for removal was the president’s consideration of U.S. involvement in Syria, but he also listed abortion, LGBT rights, and immigration “amnesty” as impeachable outrages.

In December, Corsi issued two more calls for Obama’s impeachment, this time related to Obamacare. And just three weeks ago, TeaParty.org called for Obama’s impeachment over the “Benghazi scandal.” The site also has a standing Obama-impeachment petition which largely focuses on Benghazi.

Now, Corsi and TeaParty.org have a new (albeit recycled) rationale for demanding the president’s impeachment: Obama and congressional Democrats’ plan to push for passage of comprehensive immigration reform, known in shorthand to Corsi and his audience as “amnesty.”

Corsi believes that Obama – who is frequently criticized by immigrant rights groups for overseeing record levels of deportations – aims to lavish taxpayer-funded benefits on undocumented immigrants with the ultimate aim of ceasing all enforcement of immigration laws:

Count out the taxpayer money Barack Obama intends to redistribute to illegal immigrants allowed to flood the country once Congress has voted a truly open border with Mexico:

- Free education in public schools in Spanish;

- Abundant welfare payments including food stamps issued generously to all Hispanics regardless of immigration status;

- DREAM act privileges for Hispanics to get special college admission tuition breaks;

- Obamacare plus endless free medical care at Hospital emergency rooms.

The list goes on.

To push this agenda forward, Attorney General Eric Holder has followed President Obama’s instructions to stop deportations of illegal immigrants as part of a grander policy of refusing to enforce immigration laws altogether.

What Corsi is referring to, of course, is a misleading report from the nativist Center for Immigration Studies – which was widely featured on Fox News – that purported to show that the administration had released a flood of criminals, willy-nilly, from immigration detention centers. The study was widely denounced for its misleading and false data, as well as its failure to include countervailing evidence, including the fact that deportations of undocumented immigrants with criminal records have nearly doubled since 2008. This is fairly typical of CIS studies, which have a long history of distorting and falsifying data in order to reach predetermined conclusions.

Meanwhile, expect Corsi to push ahead with his futile endeavor:

Tea Party Loyalists must let Congress know that we are serious and that we intend to push for impeachment if Barack Obama and Eric Holder continue flaunting the due enforcement of our immigration laws in their politically motivated push for amnesty.

Freedom Watch’s Klayman Makes Birther Beliefs Explicit in Radio Interview

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

Right-wing activist Larry Klayman, founder of Freedom Watch, has hinted in the past at support of “birther” conspiracy theories, such as when he helped WorldNetDaily sue Esquire for satirizing “birthers.” Last week, in a radio interview, Klayman made his support explicit.

“We have a president who was elected fraudulently who wasn’t even a natural born citizen,” Klayman asserted during an interview Friday on Fox News Radio with liberal host Alan Colmes, who shook his head at this remark and asked Klayman if he thought the president was born in Hawaii.

“I believe he was born in Kenya, the evidence points to that,” Klayman replied.

Colmes noted that in fact Obama’s birth was recorded in contemporaneous notices published in two separate Hawaii newspapers. Klayman explained that those were “ads” placed by his parents in attempt to claim citizenship for their son.

“Alan, I’m not still a birther, these are the facts,” Klayman said.  “Even if he was born in the United States, many people in Hawaii place these ads in to try to get permanent residency or citizenship. Hawaii is the most corrupt state in the United States….”

“American citizenship is valuable,” he continued. “Wouldn’t your kid want to be an American citizen rather than a Kenyan?”

In reality, of course, those birth notices published in the Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin weren’t advertisements at all. Rather, they were standard newspaper birth announcements, common during this era, collected by newspaper staff reporters who gathered birth records from local hospitals (a practice that has gradually vanished from most newspapers today). In other words, these newspaper announcements stand as independent corroboration that Obama was born in a Honolulu hospital.

Klayman also went on to claim during the interview that Obama is secretly a Muslim who “favors Muslim interests over Christian and Jewish interests”. Colmes demanded that he substantiate such a claim.

“Well, number one, his dad was Muslim,” said Klayman. “Number two, he wears a ring that says my only God is Allah. He cancelled the National Day of Prayer in the White House to observe Ramadan and endorse the Ground Zero Mosque. He has been continually hostile toward Israel in six years.”

Colmes then proceeded to knock down each of these claims factually, observing that Klayman was collecting and parroting “old wives’ tales” that had all been proven untrue.

Klayman was undaunted, and indeed continued in the same vein. “Alan, you’re Jewish, you understand what I’m talking about,” he said. “You know, Jewish people here, I’ll tell you something, you walk around Beverly Hills, California, or any other place, people are changing their opinion of this president. They believe he’s an anti-Semite. He hangs out with Reverend Wright. Previously with Derrick Bell, who’s a vehement anti-Semite and a law professor. Louis Farrakhan is one of his friends.”

Klayman concluded that “Obama in his heart is not a Christian.”

The interview is reflective of Klayman’s increasingly extremist approach to the Obama presidency. Last November, he led a small demonstration outside the White House in which he demanded that the president “come out with his hands up.” It was a spectacular failure.

Mississippi Judge Accused of Striking Young Black Man, Then Yelling ‘Run, Nigger, Run!’

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

A longtime local Justice Court judge in Canton, Miss., reportedly struck a mentally challenged, young black man on May 8 during a flea market in the town, cursing him and yelling, “Run, nigger, run!”

According to a report by Jerry Mitchell at the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, Madison County Justice Court Judge Bill Weisenberger is accused by the family of 20-year-old Eric Rivers, as well as several witnesses, of striking the young man at the Canton Flea Market and chasing him away while shouting racial epithets. The incident has spurred an angry protest from local NAACP officials.

Weisenberger, according to witnesses, was dressed in the uniform of a police officer, since he was moonlighting as a security officer for the market. The judge, who is white, reportedly began questioning the presence and behavior of Rivers, who is black, and slapped him twice, chasing him out of the market and yelling epithets after him.

One witness, a vendor at the fair, said she saw Rivers hanging out on the street corner in hopes of picking up work hauling goods from people’s cars to their booths at the market, a common practice.  She said she saw Rivers asking people if they needed help: “That young man was wanting to work to earn money to buy a bike.”

The woman’s sister said she saw Weisenberger “rear back and slap” Rivers, and then chase him from the area with racial slurs.

“I do not care if this young man was being a nuisance,” said the first witness, who is white. “I do not care if he were breaking a law, I do not care if he were loitering, but I do care that a man of authority, one that is sworn to protect and serve, was slapping a young man.”


She added that she also saw Weisenberger verbally assault a female vendor at the market, threatening to make her move her car to a distant location before she could unload. When the woman asked him to change his tone, he reportedly replied that he would only deal with her husband, “because he didn’t take orders from a woman.”

The executive director of the state Judicial Commission, Darlene Ballard, told Mitchell that if the allegations are true, they would “violate multiple canons” of the state’s Judicial Code of Conduct.

Former Canton Mayor William Truly, president of the Canton branch of the NAACP, led a press conference Friday denouncing Weisenberger.

“This is 2014, not 1960, where someone could slap a young man and call out, ‘Run, nigger, run,” Truly said. He called on Weisenberger either to simply resign or to step aside from hearing cases until the matter is resolved.

“No citizen should have to face justice before a judge who holds such a high degree of racial animus and hatred,” Truly said.

Utah Man Facing Hate Crime Charges Says Threatening Black Child Was ‘Just My Opinion’

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

A Utah man is now facing federal hate crime charges for threatening to kill a black child of a neighboring Caucasian couple. Robert Keller, a 70-year-old resident of Hurricane, wrote to the family to say he would kill the boy if the child remained in his neighborhood.

Keller told KUTV that he didn’t mean anything by it, “All I wanted to do was open their eyes.” “To me, it’s not a threat, it’s my opinion, which I should be allowed to,” he said, trailing off, before concluding with, “Of course, I wrote it down, which was a mistake.”

What Keller wrote down, in a letter to the family last December, was a direct threat. His hate-filled letter – which concluded with “Get this nigger out!” – explicitly warned the parents that he would kill either the boy or the parents if they did not remove him from the neighborhood.

By Keller’s own description the letter read, “If it was my daughter – I think I wrote that I’d slice his throat or something like that.”

Keller told KUTV that he was inspired to write the letter out of fear that the boy might try to date white girls. “I just said, ‘What’s gonna happen later on down the road, when this black kid starts chasing these girls? Which I’ve seen,” he said. “That’s what set me off. I saw him walking down the street with a white gal.”

The property manager at the neighborhood where both Keller and the family live was shocked when she read the letter. Tenille Ewing told reporters that the letter “made threats against life,” adding: “It hit home, because it’s my ethnic background.” “It was very shocking to me that people still have that much hate, nowadays,” she said.

Keller was originally charged with interfering with a right to fair housing, a federal offense, in December. But the Department of Justice recently expanded the case to include federal hate crime charges: The first count alleges that  Keller’s threats interfered with the housing rights of the Caucasian residents to associate in their home with their African-American family member, and the second count alleges that Keller’s threats interfered with the African-American resident’s right to occupy the home.

According to the DOJ, Keller faces “a statutory maximum penalty of one year in prison on each count” if convicted.

Gun Owners of America: USDA Buying Guns, Armor to Prepare for ‘Confrontation with American Citizens,’ Dictatorship

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]


There have been a number of conspiracy theories in recent years about ammunition shortages. More often than not, these theories lay the blame for the low ammo supplies at the feet of, you guessed it, President Obama.

Now a spokesman for Gun Owners of America (GOA), a far-right gun lobby organization, has a new twist on these theories: The government, notably the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), is buying up ammunition in preparation for a “confrontation with American citizens,” the next step in establishing an Obama dictatorship.

“We suspect that the federal government is anticipating and preparing for confrontation with American citizens,” Mike Hammond, GOA’s legislative counsel, told the American Family Association website OneNewsNow. Hammond then wondered aloud “if President Obama is preparing for a dictatorship.”

“What are the characteristics of a dictatorship?” Hammond said. “An individual who is bound not by the law, but by his own desires and his own goals. And that may be where we are now.”

According to OneNewsNow, Hammond wondered “if the USDA closely watched the Cliven Bundy confrontation in Nevada” and questioned ammo purchases by the U.S. Postal Service and the Social Security Administration (both of which employ investigators and special agents who work with law enforcement agencies to fight theft and fraud).

Hammond also falsely claimed that “the Obama administration is making it increasingly difficult for American citizens to obtain ammunition,” a claim that was recently discussed at length by conspiracist website Newsmax – in an article featuring GOA.

“There is no doubt that the president’s anti-gun agenda has driven the sale of guns and ammunition through the roof,” Erich Pratt, spokesman for Gun Owners of America, told Newsmax. “President Barack Obama can truly be known as the gun salesman of the decade.”

Indeed, increased sales of both guns and ammunition have been closely associated with Obama’s election in 2008 – though not, from the evidence, due to any action on the part of the president, who generally avoided discussion of gun violence issues prior to the horrific massacre of schoolchildren at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut in December 2012.

Instead, the National Rifle Association and other gun-lobby groups, abetted by right-wing pundits such as Glenn Beck, began claiming even before Obama became president that he intended to take their guns away. That immediately resulted in a huge spike in sales of both weapons and ammunition.

This trend only intensified after Obama won and continued through his 2012 re-election campaign and beyond.

Theories that the ongoing shortage of ammunition are a product of a nefarious Obama plot continue to persist, with one gun website recently theorizing that “the long term ammo shortage crisis is due to a well-executed ‘secret’ plan by the Obama administration to control the ammo markets through federal agency purchases and other covert measures.”

The NRA itself recently knocked down these theories, explaining in the pages of American Rifleman that everyday gun owners themselves are the main driver behind increases in prices and limited supplies. The NRA reported that ammo sales excise taxes received by the federal government roughly tripled in size between 2000 and 2012, while the dollar value of ammo sales increased nearly 100 percent between 2007 and 2012.

What that meant, the NRA explained, was that ammo sales “started to climb fast as gun sales began surging” as early as 2008, when fears about a possible Obama presidency began circulating.

As the Spokane Spokesman-Review recently explained, “Increased sales triggered even more demand as shooters stockpiled as much ammunition as they could get their hands on.” It also noted that the ammo sales frenzy is linked to record levels of firearms sales in recent years.

In other words, fears over a fictitious, Obama-led gun confiscation sparked a run on guns and ammo. The subsequent shortages led to further buying frenzies each time new supplies became available, leading once again to shortages that fueled more fears and more demand. It’s a vicious cycle that has served the interests of far-right gun groups while lining the pockets of gun manufacturers.

You can rest assured that GOA, in particular, won’t let the facts get in the way of this conspiracy

Anti-Semitism Illustrated: David Duke Working on New ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

White supremacist David Duke has a new book coming out, of sorts – a repackaged and “illustrated” version of the notorious anti-Semitic hoax, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” But unlike previous editions of the text – all of which attempted to claim that the book was a genuine transcript of a gathering of wealthy Jews who conspired to bring about the enslavement of Western civilization – Duke is taking a different tack.

“The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” Duke now claims, is in fact a work of fiction – which means, he says, that the hoax issue is moot. Instead, as he explains in his promotional video for the book, the text is like all “great literature” – a work of art whose value lies in the greater truths it supposedly reveals about the world.
Duke argues on his website that “it is actually irrelevant if the original Protocols were written by Czarist agents or not”:

In fact, as I point out, they are in reality a highly predictive work of ‘fiction’—much like George Orwell’s ‘1984’, or Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’. Although the characters and storyline in both those works are ‘fiction’, the idea which underlay both those books was most certainly fact. Thus, they were works of ‘fiction’—just like the Protocols of Zion.

To illustrate his point, Duke includes film footage from the 1968 film version of “Romeo and Juliet” – because Shakespeare, he claims, may have lifted the story from somewhere else – as well as “The Wizard of Oz” (complete with President Obama’s face taking the place of the wizard) and “1984”, to which Duke repeatedly compares “Protocols.”

“It is a historical literary creation of political and social importance. It is a brilliant work of dystopian literature – as important as Orwell’s ‘1984’,” Duke says in the video. “So, call it a forgery, a fabrication, a fantasy, if you like. I won’t argue with you, as long as you dare to read it – along with my historical and contemporary evidence that illustrates its major assertions.”

Duke says that “Protocols” only prove thats “truth is stranger than fiction!” He then proceeds to run through a list of anti-Semitic, conspiracist claims that undergird his worldview.

There is nothing in “Protocols” that would particularly distinguish it as “literature,” at least by any academic standards: There is no great writing, no great storytelling, no poetic phrasing, no great philosophical insight. It simply recounts – in tedious fashion – a fictitious meeting in a graveyard among a cabal of wealthy Jews who lay out the principles of their plan to enslave mankind and control the world.

The text is a well-known hoax that purports to be a glorified transcript from a real meeting. Early editions claimed that the document was read aloud in Basel, Switzerland, at the First Zionist Congress in 1897. All previous attempts at marketing the book have pretended that it is the record of a real meeting.

Its origins were as a piece of political propaganda aimed at smearing Jews on behalf of Russia’s Tsar Nicholas II shortly after the turn of the century. It then found its way to America, where it was avidly promoted by industrialist Henry Ford in the 1920s under the title The International Jew. It was even more notoriously adopted by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany as an uber-text that eventually fueled the Holocaust.

Duke touts the appearance of a Ford essay on behalf of “Protocols” in his new edition of the book, but neglects to mention that Ford eventually repudiated those views, at least publicly.

Duke apparently needs some help publishing the book. At the end of the video, he encourages supporters to give him $100 (or more) today, and in return, they’ll get a nice signed and numbered copy when they’re finally printed.

South Carolina Klansman Plans a National Rally, but the Invitation List Is Short

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

The leader of a South Carolina Ku Klux Klan organization has announced plans for what he’s billing as a “national” gathering of fellow Klansmen, dubbed “KKK Jam,” at his group’s headquarters in Abbeville this July. However, the invitation list is decidedly short.

Chuck Murray, whose home near Abbeville serves as the national headquarters of his group – the New Empire Knights of the Ku Klux Klan – explained to a reporter for WHNS-TV in Greenville that only members of the New Empire Knights would be permitted at “KKK Jam,” scheduled for July 25-27:

This event is only open for members, family members and Klansmen being Knighted. I run a very secretive Klan. The media, like you, enjoys exposing people. I have school teachers, doctors and law enforcement as members. While America by law, grants people personal freedoms, I have seen people in the past harassed by Zionist groups such as the ADL and SPLC. I’ve seen people fired for expressing their freedoms of speech and religion. I do everything I can to grant my members their safety.

Murray explained: “This event is our first official National Meeting. We Knight new members who have reached Knighthood and promote Knights to higher ranks who have worked hard for us.”

And Murray was careful to distinguish his “Knights” from other Klan groups, noting that the Imperial Klans of America and the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan each have their own annual gatherings in other locales. He even requested that the reporter only use photos of his particular sect so as not to risk being associated with some lesser Klan group:

I only ask that if you show pictures from the Klan, use pictures that I send you. There are currently between 30-45 Klan groups in the United States today. I do not want a story done which shows some random Klan group. That group could be a false Klan made up of criminals, drug addicts and drunks. I will gladly send you another email along with pictures of our previous Klan events.

Murray wrote that his New Empire Knights outfit was rather new, having formed only in February of 2013: “There have been numerous Klan groups since 1948. I had ‘retired’ from the Klan in late 2010 or so. I had a meeting with some fellow Klan friends in late 2012. They voted me in as Imperial Wizard (National Leader) and the New Empire Knights was born.”

Their motives: “Like me, others were sick of these fake Klan groups made up of skinheads, jobless slobs and criminals,” Murray wrote. “We wanted a real Klan group made up of white Christians.”

He explained his background in more detail to a reporter from the Greenwood Index-Journal:

I had been in a few smaller Klans during the 1980’s. In around 1993, I do believe, I joined the Konfederation of Klans (KOK). The group disbanded after about two years and I followed Ron Edwards into the Imperial Klans of America, where I served as Grand Dragon (state leader of South Carolina). A few states split from Ron and formed the Brotherhood of Klans (BOK), which became the largest Klan group in 2008. Dale Fox, the Imperial Wizard passed away suddenly of a heart attack and the BOK was never the same. I took a couple of years off from the Klan. A friend called me and asked me to attend a few meetings in Georgia in early 2013. I did. Next thing I know, I was voted in as the Imperial Wizard of the New Empire Knights.

Murray told WHNS-TV that he had been motivated to join the Klan by his experience in the Army, where he says he served two years:

I saw minorities, mainly blacks at the time, being promoted through the ranks with lower test scores than whites. Of course even today, this still happens. I noticed the downfall in our school system, once safe white neighborhoods turning into dangerous nonwhite gang warzones and the rights of Christians (white Christians) were being taken away.

Like most people, I saw that something in this nation was not right. It seemed the Klan was one of the very few groups out there speaking up for White Americans.

He scoffed at neighbors’ concerns in Abbeville about a national Klan gathering: “What are people concerned about? The event is held on private property and my members have done nothing to harass or scare these people.”

In his interview with the Index-Journal, Murray touted his organization’s ostensible charity work, including a scheduled June 21 food drive in Kinsport, Tenn., at which all races will supposedly be welcome:

We have done several events like the one you mentioned. My Georgia guys have done the most. They did one a few months back in Newnan. A few blacks showed up. At first they were being very vocal of their dislike toward us. After talking to them and offering them free food, many of them were surprised at our kindness. We showed them pictures of the Klan during the 1920s and even during the 1950s doing charity and helping blacks, something you never see on TV or in books. We educated them about their ignorance of the Klan.

He explained further:

During Christmas time, I personally donated several boxes of clothes to the needy. My guys in Georgia have done several food drives. My guys in Indiana just recently sent $100 to a black family whose children were killed in a house fire started by white thugs. You never see the ADL or SPLC print those stories, do you?

Murray, at his own website, seemed to find the attention over his “KKK Jam” plans a little disconcerting:

Apparently the media in South Carolina has very little to do. They are making a big deal about a Klan event held on private property. I am not even sure why this is making headlines. When did people’s personal freedoms become major news stories? I have been amazed at the media coverage of our event.

And he explained why he chose to be so selective in his invitations: “People seem to think we believe we are better than others or too good for others. Nothing could be further from the truth,” he wrote.

It’s not snobbery, Murray says, but security: “Keeping a secretive membership is what keeps us safe. I also don’t want to be guilty by association. This happens a lot in the white nationalist movement. Keeping to yourself is the smartest thing any pro-white organization can do.”

Why Progressives Have Botched the Fight Over Common Core

[Above: An anti-Common Core video from those friends of progressives, the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity.]

I've been forced to conclude that the people leading the progressive side of the fight against the new Common Core educational standards are dishonest and disingenuous -- either that, or they are incredibly naive politically, and are incapable of coming to terms with the reality of their situation.

Because what they have been doing is, frankly, standing back and letting far-right extremists and corporate-education supporters hijack their issue, naively believing that sharing the goal of derailing CCSS was good enough, and failing to realize that they were aligning themselves with the very people dedicated to the destruction of progressive politics across a broad swath of issues, including education.

Instead of denouncing these elements and their falsehoods, their conspiracy theories, their fearmongering and their hatemongering – all of which are elements of the far right’s campaign against CCSS – these supposed progressives have soft-pedaled their presence, referring to them as the “Tea Party” element (when in fact these folks are much more radical than that) and suggesting that, well at least the right-wing folks have demonstrated that CCSS can be stopped.

Well, yeah, it can be stopped, if you’re willing to lie, and fearmonger, and hatemonger, and cast the entire proceedings as a product of a nefarious New World Order conspiracy. If that’s your template for success, please count me out.

I mean, come on, folks. You really need to stop and assess what you’re doing when the Koch-funded Americans For Prosperity – one of the leading proponents of corporate education – avidly joins your side and attacks your opponents. But instead of giving progressives pause, all we hear are excuses.

I was forced to finally reach this conclusion by education reformer Diane Ravitch’s recent post attacking the Southern Poverty Law Center for its devastating study exposing the far right’s involvement in the CCSS debate.

Ravitch, rather than explaining that progressives wish to have nothing to do with John Birch Society paranoia, instead wishy-washes the situation: “I think there are plenty of well meaning people on different sides of the Common Core issue,” she writes. “It serves no useful purpose to divide people into good guys and bad guys.”

The naivete this reveals is astonishing. Really, Ms. Ravitch? You think that people who proclaim that "Common Core will turn every one of your children gay" are well-meaning? You think they are contributing usefully to this dialogue? Do you think we ought to be paying attention and thoughtfully heeding such arguments as part of our democratic process? Or should we, perhaps, be alarmed that such hatefulness and fearmongering is polluting what should be a rational debate? -- That being the point, of course, of the SPLC's study.

Then Ravitch goes on to proclaim high-mindedly that “our national discussion should deal with consequential issues, such as the quality of the standards, whether they are appropriate for students of different age groups, and how they are likely to narrow or increase these gaps among different student groups.”

Gee, that would be great. Now if only the people on the far right’s side of the debate would actually heed that advice, because the entirety of their campaign against CCSS has focused on all the non-issues that Ravitch thinks are a distraction.

And then she attacks the SPLC for pointing all of this out, calling their study “one sided”. She writes:

Unfortunately, SPLC chose to paint opposition to the CC as Tea Party and/or rightwing extremists who want to destroy public education. This is odd indeed because the critics and supporters of CC are strange bedfellows.

Either Ravitch cannot read, or she is dishonest. Because the study in fact goes to considerable pains to make clear that the opposition to CCSS is broad based. Here’s exactly what it says:

To be sure, education experts of all political stripes have raised important questions about the Common Core. Are the standards too rigorous? Are they rigorous enough? Should children and teachers be evaluated on standardized testing? Has there been ample time for implementation and teacher training? These and other issues should be the focus of robust debate—one rooted in the facts.

Unfortunately, the issues are being obscured by a cloud of overheated hyperbole, misinformation and far-right propaganda.

…

Legitimate issues obscured

To be sure, criticism of the Common Core—which is backed by the Obama administration and funded, in part, by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—is coming from all points on the political spectrum and from some leading education experts. Critics have raised important issues that should be thoroughly debated, such as: whether the standards were adequately tested; whether we can have great education that isn’t simply “teaching to the test”; whether there has been ample time for implementation and teacher training; and, significantly, whether it’s wise to evaluate teachers on the results of Common Core-aligned tests.

But these and other issues are being obscured by a cloud of fear-mongering propaganda and extremist hyperbole. The attacks from the far right stand apart from the legitimate criticism because of their incendiary language, their apocalyptic warnings, and their reliance on distortions, outright falsehoods and antigovernment conspiracy theories.

…

Current debates

Many of the legitimate debates surrounding the Common Core focus on concerns that have been central to education reform discussions since the 1980s. It is unclear whether the fringe elements of the radical right are ignorant of this history or whether they are deliberately distorting the facts. What is clear is that the unfounded and paranoid rhetoric surrounding the standards distracts from the important debates that are happening among highly informed scholars, state officeholders, policymakers, educators, and families across America. The following are a sampling of some of the valid Common Core-related concerns under debate:

• Education historian and researcher Diane Ravitch has asserted that the Common Core was not developed according to the principles established by the American National Standards Institute. Ravitch says her reason for opposing the standards is not the content but rather concerns about the transparency of the development process and the exclusion of informed, concerned interests such as early childhood educators and special education experts.

• Some critics see the Gates Foundation’s support as overwhelmingly disproportionate. The fact that the foundation not only funded—directly and indirectly—such a large percentage of the development of the standards but also the validation and some implementation measures has raised concerns about the ethics and desirability of a single private entity being able to influence a public initiative of the Common Core’s scope.

• Some educators oppose the Common Core out of concerns that the standards depart from best practices for teaching and supporting culturally diverse youth. One such critique refers to the reduced emphasis on student reflection and experience in the writing standards. Others point to the lack of diversity in exemplar texts.

• Many teachers and administrators find the implementation timeline of the Common Core unrealistic, noting that the rigor of the standards has bumped the bar so high that it will take years to actually reach it. Meanwhile, pressure on schools to show immediate and measurable improvement makes it difficult for them to chart a slower and more deliberate path to implementation.

• While Race to the Top funding is not directly tied to Common Core adoption, it is tied to the adoption of college and career readiness standards, and more points were awarded to states that adopted the Common Core. Some critics saw the Race to the Top stipulations as federal strong-arming that allowed the Obama administration to paint state adoption as entirely voluntary when, in fact, there were potential financial consequences for opting out.

• Many progressives criticize the role that the Common Core plays in magnifying the the toxic testing culture that NCLB and its high-stakes testing made a feature of life in public schools. They note that corporate interests are served whenever testing companies have a mandated market, and that the quick implementation period is, in fact, feeding these interests by creating an urgent need for implementation materials.

I still believe these are significant issues that need to be addressed. But guess what? Once the far right has hijacked the opposition to CCSS and dominates the opposition, and comes to represent that opposition, those issues will never be heard or debated.

Instead, we will find ourselves explaining over and over to people that no, this is not a U.N./New World Order conspiracy to brainwash your children and turn them gay.

And then progressives will wonder why no one takes them seriously.

Idaho’s GOP Gubernatorial Primary Debate Reveals Deep Streak of Extremism

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]

Usually, political debates are an opportunity for candidates to provide voters with enough information for them to make informed decisions before filling out their ballots. But Wednesday night’s Republican gubernatorial primary debate in Boise, Idaho, featuring the state’s top four conservative candidates, raised more questions than it answered.

Two of the four candidates – a foul-mouthed biker from Nampa named Harley Brown and a bearded anti-abortion activist named Walt Bayes – had previously run for office but garnered few votes. Their show-stealing debate performances, broadcast on Idaho’s public television network, revealed why.

Both men were on the program at the insistence of incumbent Gov. L. Butch Otter, who was accused by his Tea Party rival, State Sen. Russ Fulcher, of inviting the men to participate so that he could avoid Fulcher’s own questions.

Brown set the tone by explaining early on in the debate that God told him to run for president while he was going through personal trouble: “I cried out to God. I said, ‘How about putting me back on active duty and making me a battalion commander?’ Long story short, he says, ‘No, son, I got a higher rank for you. I’m gonna make you a commander in chief.’ And I stagger not at his promise. I’m gonna get into that more with you.”

Brown paused briefly and looked at everyone staring at him, and said: “Don’t think I’m crazy, ‘cause I’m not.”

However, while Brown was mostly colorful and crude, Bayes was clearly the most radical of the lot, declaring abortion outright murder, saying he would shoot authorities if they came for his children, and implying he thought LGBT people should be put to death.

One of Bayes’ early statements was a rant about abortion, claiming it was against state law to even perform the procedure: “If I’m governor, I am going to enforce the law. And somebody says, ‘What about the Supreme Court?’ If the Supreme Court goes to hell, I’m not followin’. And I’m telling you folks, when you murder 56 million babies, you’re asking for our country to be demolished.”

He read from Scripture – Romans 1:24-32, to be exact – when he was asked about the recent court decision overturning Idaho’s ban on same-sex marriage, saying: “My main loyalty is to God Almighty, and what he says is what I go by. And this is part of the Bible.”

The reading concluded with the line: “Who, knowing the judgment of God, that they would commit such things, are worthy of death.”

Bayes also boasted of having been arrested for his home schooling advocacy when he was asked if he could govern. “They told me we couldn’t home-school. I prayed about it. I stood on my hind legs like a man. I told ‘em what I thought of ‘em, and the television would talk to me for thirty minutes or an hour: Well what would you do if they came out to take your kids? Well, you’d shoot ‘em! What else would you do?”

Bayes also had a scathing assessment of the two political parties: “I honestly think half of the Republican Party is Democrats and half of the Democratic is Communist.”

Near the end of the debate, Bayes exclaimed: “Our energy plants that are run by atomic – they can stand one-fifteenth of an earthquake like that one in Japan! And my Bible says they’re gonna get worse and worse!”

While Brown and Bayes kept the audience’s attention with their outlandish pronouncements, the two more mainstream candidates – incumbent Gov. L. Butch Otter and State Sen. Russ Fulcher, a Tea Party favorite – held wonky discussions mostly between themselves about serious state policies and politics.

The two fringe candidates also tried their hand at policy, voicing sentiments similar to those heard on the right surrounding the standoff at Cliven Bundy’s Nevada ranch.

“The first thing I want to do is take Idaho ground back from the federal government,” said Bayes. “The Constitution – the Idaho Constitution – states plainly that the federal government only owns a few buildings. The land is ours. We’ve got as much right to all the land in this state, including the wilderness, as New York has Manhattan. I’ve got as much right to see Manhattan Island like they paid twenty-four dollars for as they have to come out here and look at our wilderness. We’ve got a bunch of Eastern idiots running everything!”

Brown chimed in: “I agree with Mr. Bayes. The key is getting our land back from the feds. And here’s my
plan of attack.  … OK, you go in there and you use spiritual warfare. Nobody – everybody talks about the natural. But I’m gonna talk about the other realm we need to extend. You bind those evil spirits that are behind the feds with the blood of Jesus, the name of Jesus, the power of entombment of the Holy Spirit, the power of agreement, the Word of God. Take air superiority, and then go in there with your tanks, on the ground, with [colleague Chris] Troupis’s lawsuits. Blitzkrieg.”

The somewhat astonished moderator interjected that the question she had asked was about taxes. Brown was unruffled: “Taxes are a drag,” he said. “I don’t even like to think about it. Fighting the feds is more exciting for me.”

Brown was also clearly unapologetic about the bigoted jokes and remarks he makes at his campaign website, “The Candid Candidate”. “You might find it offensive, but I hit everybody — Jews, Irish people, black jokes and religious jokes,” Brown said when asked about the site. “I don’t like political correctness! Can I say this? It sucks! … I’m about as politically correct as your proverbial turd in a punchbowl. And I’m proud of it. And I’m going for the vote of the real people.”

Indeed, as Idaho Statesman columnist Dan Popkey reported, Brown made a crude racist joke about “wetbacks” during the warmup for the debate and was warned that he would be cut off from questioning if he made such comments during the debate.

At the closing, Brown finished the tale of how God told him he would become president, including a mention of “trumped up restraining orders” that prevented him from seeing his kids. He also waved a signed statement from a “Masai prophet” that supposedly confirmed that God had told him this.

“You have your choice, folks,” Brown concluded, waving at his fellow candidates. “A cowboy, a curmudgeon, a biker, or a normal guy. Take your pick… We’re leaving it up to you.”