Wingnut Truckers Vow to Bring 3,000 to D.C., But That's Looking Dubious at Best

Those angry right-wing truckers are still promising that at least 3,000 of their number will be showing up in Washington, D.C., this weekend to bring traffic along the Beltway to a grinding halt as part of a protest of what organizers call “the blatant disregard of our Constitution”.

It’s not so clear, however, whether the protest organizers will be able to deliver on those promises. Some of the participants appear to be backing out – or at least tempering their rhetoric – and the protest so far appears to be, as a conservative Washington Times columnist put it, “disorganized and confusing.”

Much of the confusion was spawned by a leading participant named Earl Conlon, a Georgia trucker who earlier told U.S. News and World Report that the protesters intended to arrest President Obama and members of Congress. A couple of days later, he told a Washington Post reporter that the whole thing was a hoax and that he wouldn’t be showing up there after all.

However, Conlon was never one of the organizers of the event. That title belongs to Zeeda Andrews, a former country singer who appeared on Glenn Beck’s television show this week to explain that indeed the protest was proceeding according to plan. At the protest’s Facebook page, Andrews and other participants dismissed the Washington Post story as disinformation ordered by the Obama administration.

Andrews told Beck that she had 3,000 “RSVPs” from other truckers for the protest. She also urged non-truckers to participate by refusing to buy anything on the weekend.

However, Andrews’ credibility is probably not much greater than Earl Conlon’s, considering her own lengthy history of dubious pronouncements. As Ben Dimiero at Media Matters explored at length, Andrews has a considerable record of imbibing in bizarre conspiracy theories.

That includes her belief that President Obama is actually Osama bin Laden in disguise, as she described in a YouTube post: “He is alive call me crazy but, Osama Bin Laden is our President Obama do your research,” she wrote. “The CIA has been preparing for this since he was a boy. They have same height, bone structure, hands and ears both are left handed the Osama face was created by Hollywood. The fox is in the hen house.”

The report also demonstrates that Andrews has a history of posting racially incendiary material, including photos suggesting the Obama is a secret Muslim, to her Facebook page. Among her “likes” are a variety of conspiracy theories, including so-called “chemtrail” theories positing that passenger jets flying across American skies are secretly poisoning or drugging the population.

Also, as we noted earlier, the truckers’ protest is employing radio host Pete Santilli as one of their chief media spokesmen; Santilli is perhaps best known for wishing on the air that he could shoot Hillary Clinton in the vagina. As RightWingWatch notes, Santilli angrily denounced Earl Conlon’s threat to arrest members of Congress, saying the truckers only were demanding the impeachment of President Obama.

But on Wednesday, as Media Matters reports, Santilli called for violence if the trucker protest fails. Santilli referred to a group militiamen who dub themselves “Three Percenters” – that is, a tiny faction willing to take violent action – in the rant: “If we do not rise up this week, peacefully, there is going to be Three Percenters who I will also join, to make it not so peacefully. That's what's going to happen,” he said.

“Okay, our country will be saved. There is a select few of us, we'll call them Three Percenters that will take the next logical step to stop our domestic enemies. It will be stopped, I'm going to say this, this is not a threat. We will defend our nation to the absolute death.”

Cross-posted at Hatewatch.

Arizona Lawmaker’s Call for Constitutional Sheriffs Has Radical Roots

An Arizona legislator recently made headlines by comparing President Obama to Adolf Hitler as she decried the closures of national parks within her district, part of the ongoing federal shutdown. She posted the following on her Facebook page:

Barton later defended the Obama-Hitler comparison, telling the Arizona Capitol Times that she believes the president is “dictating beyond his authority,” citing gun-control legislation and Obamacare as examples: “It’s not just the death camps. [Hitler] started in the communities, with national health care and gun control. You better read your history. Germany started with national health care and gun control before any of that other stuff happened. And Hitler was elected by a majority of people,” she said.


But while the inapt comparison may seem outrageous (the claim about gun control under the Nazis, for one, is entirely bogus), Barton’s plea to call out “Constitutional Sheriffs” to nullify the authority of federal park rangers is even more interesting, and certainly more revealing.

Those “Constitutional Sheriffs” that she hopes can “revoke” the power of federal authorities are actually participants in a far-right antigovernment “Patriot” movement effort — descended from old Posse Comitatus teachings — to enlist the sheriffs of America in the belief that individual county sheriffs are the highest law of the land and possess the power to nullify and even arrest federal authorities.

One of the leaders of the “Constitutional Sheriffs” campaign is longtime Patriot movement figure Richard Mack (who counts Safford, Ariz. — Rep. Barton’s home — as his own childhood hometown). His efforts to enlist law-enforcement officers in the conspiracist worldview of the Patriots and militias dates back to the 1990s, but is also credited with helping to spur the movement’s recent resurgence. In addition to his own Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, Mack is also prominent in the Oath Keepers movement.

Rep. Barton also has a history of far-right activism. Her page at the website of the Arizona House of Representatives trumpets her mid-1990s activism in the so-called “Sagebrush Rebellion” — an antigovernment land-rights movement popular in the West in the 1980s and ’90s — and says she was “an elected officer in People for the West, a land-rights group.” This latter organization was a major player in the so-called “Wise Use” movement, which in the 1990s became a fertile recruitment ground for the Patriot movement and efforts to organize militias.

The notion of the supremacy of the local sheriff originated with the Posse Comitatus movement, a radical anti-Semitic organization, fueled by conspiracy theories and race hatred, that sought to dismantle the federal government and its civil-rights institutions. The Posse laid the groundwork for various Patriot-movement organizations in the 1990s, including the Montana Freemen and Richard Mack’s own early organizations.

Rep. Barton so far has not responded to the SPLC’s queries regarding her promotion of the “Constitutional Sheriffs” and its Patriot movement agenda.

Cross-posted at Hatewatch.

Truckers' Protest in D.C. This Weekend to Demand Obama Impeachment

A group of politically right-oriented long-haul truckers is attempting to organize a day of protest in Washington, D.C., wherein they essentially bring all traffic around the nation’s capital to a grinding halt by creating traffic jams on the “Beltway” system surrounding the city.

The only problem with the protest – scheduled for the coming weekend of Oct. 11-13 – is that it isn’t exactly clear what the truckers are protesting, nor is it clear what will meet their demands. It appears, though, that they expect Congress to impeach President Obama, overturn the congressionally approved health care reforms, and to disband the Department of Homeland Security.

The only aspect of the planned protest that is clear is that it is fueled by conspiracy theories regarding President Obama and fears about an imminent economic collapse. And it is being promoted by “Patriots” and radio-show hosts with a history of far-right agitation.

One of the would-be participants told U.S. News and World Report that the truckers intend to inspire the masses to force the arrest of President Obama and members of Congress.

The chief organizer of the “Truckers Ride for the Constitution” is a former country music singer named Zeeda Andrews who created a website and Facebook page for the campaign earlier this summer, and it has been gradually building momentum with the help of right-wing radio hosts.

Andrews’ website details the “demands” of the truckers in a somewhat oblique fashion, presented as a list of paranoid fears of supposed “unconstitutional” behavior by the government. Indeed, the list of demands begins: “Long before he was president, Barry Soetoro, aka Barack Obama, was already plotting with others, to overturn the Constitution for the United States.”

It then goes on to list a variety of offending actions – including emissions regulations for trucks in California, and a lack of truck parking (“More truck stops have went out of business because of this administration’s economic impact,” the manifesto reads). Among the actions the truckers appear to believe are unconstitutional are the Affordable Care Act, the National Defense Authorization Act, and the Patriot Act, since the truckers insist the Department of Homeland Security is an “unconstitutional” entity.

It also claims the Obama administration is violation the War Powers Act by “exposing, and administering experimental, psychotropic, mind altering drugs for control over soldiers during secret, clandestine operations.”

Andrews told U.S. News and World Report that among the actions that Congress could take to prevent the “shutdown” by the truckers would be the impeachment of President Obama. But not all of the participants agree.

"We are not going to ask for impeachment," a Georgia trucker named Earl Conlon, who claimed to be in charge of logistics for the protest, told the reporter. "We are coming whether they like it or not. We're not asking for impeachment, we're asking for the arrest of everyone in government who has violated their oath of office." Among those he expected to see arrested are former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California.

One of the most avid supporters of the protest is radio host Pete Santilli, who recently joined up with fired Pennsylvania police chief Mark Kessler to cohost a Patriot-movement radio show. He hosted Andrews on his show recently to promote the protest, promising to “shut Washington down.”

On that program, Andrews made clear that the purpose of the protest was to warn Americans that the government was conspiring to bring down the nation’s economy. “They are going to crash the economy, there’s no doubt about that,” she said. “That’s what they’re planning.”

Conlon, in the meantime, appears to be promoting the classic Patriot-movement strategy of applying a “Citizens Grand Jury” – in which ordinary “sovereign citizens” can convene a jury and declare federal laws unconstitutional without court approval – to the elected officials in Washington. He told the U.S. News and World reporter that such a jury would be used to indict various liberal officials.

"We want these people arrested, and we're coming in with the grand jury to do it," he said. "We are going to ask the law enforcement to uphold their constitutional oath and make these arrests. If they refuse to do it, by the power of the people of the United States and the people's grand jury, they don't want to do it, we will. ... We the people will find a way."

However, the movement is already showing signs of fractiousness: Andrews has angrily disclaimed Conlon’s participation, warning him on the protest’s Facebook page that he has been “advised NOT to misrepresent himself as a spokesperson for this peaceful event.” One post commented: “Although Earl riled up a sensational title, he stepped out of bounds of our peaceful intent and methods. DHS would love to have a reason to use their bullets.”

Cross-posted at Hatewatch.

Leading Christian Hard-Liner Calls for Military Takeover in U.S.

Rick Joyner, one of the leading lights of the Christian Dominionist movement, recently told his television audience that democracy has failed in America, and that the nation’s only hope, in light of the looming “tyranny” of the Obama administration, is “a military takeover – martial law.”

Said Joyner: “There’s no way our Republic can last much longer. It may not last through Obama’s second term. There are a lot of people who feel that it can’t. That there are forces right now that are seeking to undermine and to destroy the Republic. There’s almost a glib and almost a joyful disregard of the Constitution and belittling of the Constitution. We can’t make it without that. It’s our foundation, our moorings. We’re headed for serious tyranny…

“I think we’ve been used in some wonderful and powerful ways by God. We’ve been one of the most generous nations in history. We’ve done so much good. And that’s why I appeal to the Lord: ‘Don’t let us be totally destroyed, please raise up those who will save us!’ And as I’ve started telling friends for a long time, no election is going to get the right person in there that’s going to restore us, because the system is so broken, so undermined right now, the whole system.

“I believe our only hope is a military takeover – martial law.”

One of the more disturbing aspects of this pronouncement is the fact that Joyner — who heads up the dominionist Oak Initiative, which seeks out “Christian leaders” and then tries to place them within the halls of government, including the military — is also a close associate of retired Gen. Jerry Boykin.
Boykin is best remembered as the general who, while helping to oversee the invasion of Iraq, told an audience that Islamic extremists hated the United States “because we’re a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christians. … And the enemy is a guy named Satan.” (Boykin also told another audience that he tracked down an Islamic terrorist successfully because “I knew that my God was bigger than his.”) More recently, he has gained attention for claiming that President Obama is secretly plotting a Marxist takeover of America through his health-care reforms.

Boykin’s is the first name listed on the board of Joyner’s Oak Initiative. He regularly broadcasts a TV program under the auspices of the Initiative, and has appeared in public and on TV with Joyner many times.



In one of these, they were joined by Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council — where Boykin in 2012 was named executive vice-president — in a discussion of how to get ordinary Christians involved in “the battle that America’s in today”, and Boykin urged them to form a modern-day Spartan army, declaring “Molon Labe” (“Come and take them”): “Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m at the point now where I am ready to say ‘Molon labe!’ to those in Washington, to those in the special interest groups that want to take my liberties, that want to rob my grandchildren of the ability to have the kind of America that I grew up in. I’m at the point where I’m saying, ‘Molon labe!”

However, even if Boykin agrees with Joyner that a military coup is what’s needed to save America, it is worth keeping in mind that it appears Boykin – who at one time was the nation’s deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence – now has very little influence within the Pentagon. He was, after all, investigated and rebuked by the Department of Defense for his remarks about Islam.  More recently, his bigoted remarks about Islam resulted in an Egyptian mob attacking Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s motorcade.

Joyner is not the first conservative to suggest a military coup as a means to overthrow President Obama. In July 2009, while discussing the military coup that had just occurred in Honduras, Rush Limbaugh semi-jokingly suggested that our own military leaders should follow suit, since Obama was “doing everything he could to ensure the defeat of the U.S. military,” later adding: “And if we had any good luck, Honduras would send some people here and help us get our government back.”


Limbaugh’s show is broadcast daily on Armed Services Radio.


Cross-posted at Hatewatch.

A Conversation With Cliff Schechter About the Minutemen, Immigration, and 'And Hell Followed With Her'

Listen To Current Events Internet Radio Stations with Jay Ackroyd on BlogTalkRadio

I thought you all might enjoy hearing the conversation Cliff Schechter and I had last week on Virtually Speaking, the popular web-based interview program from BlogTalkRadio, normally hosted by my old friend Jay Ackroyd. The conversation was all about the Minutemen, Shawna Forde, immigration, "border security", and all those subjects wrapped into my new book, And Hell Followed With Her: Crossing the Dark Side of the American Border. 

I hope you find it enlightening and interesting. And if it's the kind of work you want to see continue, please help pitch in with my revival fundraiser.

Minutemen May Be Gone, But Small Militia Cells Linger in Arizona

Even though it has been more than three years since the national Minutemen organization based in Arizona, and run by movement cofounder Chris Simcox, shuttered its operations, there are still would-be vigilante militiamen out patrolling the Arizona desert on the lookout for illegal border crossers. And because they are smaller cells and increasingly radical, they are proving to be a real problem.

Most recently, one of these militiamen made headlines when he got into an armed confrontation with a Maricopa County sheriff's deputy. This was especially noteworthy, since Sheriff Joe Arpaio – a well-known nativist figure himself – made a point of denouncing the vigilantism of the border watchers.

The border-watch movement has significantly dropped in popularity in recent years, largely due to the murders of an Arivaca man and his 9-year-old daughter by movement leader Shawna Forde in 2009, as well as the lethal rampage of onetime border-watch organizer J.T. Ready in 2012, and capped off by Simcox's recent arrest on charges of child molestation.

Nonetheless, they have come creeping back along the fringes in the form of small cells that do not attempt to answer to a national movement and are freer to become much more radical than the Minutemen, who in contrast aspired to appear mainstream and often vowed to "weed out" criminals and extremists – though the cases of Shawna Forde (who, it emerged, had a long and prolific criminal record) and Chris Simcox (who had previously been accused of molesting a child but never charged) make clear that was never really the case.

The new border militias make similar vows, but also do not pretend to be a mere "neighborhood watch" calling in violations to the Border Patrol, as the Minutemen did. They are drawing down on people they confront in the desert, as the clash with the deputy demonstrated.

The militias are also raising the level of fear and concern among people who do humanitarian work along these borders. Juanita Molina of the Border Action Network in Tucson described for Hatewatch a milieu in certain areas of the border where deaths have been occurring amid harassment and vandalization by border militiamen.

Molina also volunteers for the humanitarian group Humane Borders, which puts out water stations in areas of the desert where migrants are crossing and the highest incidence of deaths – most of them related to dehydration – have been occurring.

"The issues with militias out in the desert itself are significant," Molina said. "Most recently there have been a series of deaths that have occurred in the Gila Bend area.  And although humanitarian groups and law enforcement are very concerned about that area and can see that there has been an increase in deaths, unfortunately, there has been such a severe problem with the militia that humanitarian groups and law enforcement have had concerns about patrolling and even entering certain areas of the desert."

Molina said that she and her workers encounter "everyday attitudes" among militia groups that are uniformly hostile and violent: "It's not uncommon for us to receive threats or to have our offices, our trucks, our water stations vandalized, stabbed, shot," she said. "We live with this violence every day."

A TV crew from KPHO-TV in Phoenix recently went out with one of these militia crews and filmed them in action in the desert, as well as at a recruitment gathering. The militiamen insisted on anonymity – dubbing themselves such monikers as "Reaper" and "Raptor" – but insisted they were only out to perform a public service.

"We're here to protect our community, first and foremost. Protect our state, second. And in doing so, that also means curbing the flow of drugs into our cities," the man dubbed Reaper told the reporters.

This militia is being operated by a former California Minuteman named Robert Crooks, who has since removed himself to Arizona. As did Simcox and his colleagues, Crooks insisted to the KPHO reporters that he "wants to change the way militias are viewed" and claimed he doesn't accept felons or racists. 

He also dismissed the confrontation between militiaman from his crew and the Maricopa County sheriff's deputy.

"In reality, it was just the fog of war," said Crooks, adding that he is trying to cut down on drug smuggling through the Vekol Valley. "I've been shot at 23 times in 24 months," he said.

The man dubbed "Reaper" also described for the reporters how the group allows for military contractors – a number of whom showed up for a recruitment meeting, including some on active duty – to participate without officially joining so that the contractors can get around government prohibitions against joining militias.

"So we have runarounds that will legally allow for membership without the membership," said Reaper. "So you'll pass your polygraph, and everyone can sleep at night."

Crooks, who goes by the nom de guerre "Little Dog," has a colorful history as a Minuteman. He got his start running border watches in the Campo, California area for movement cofounder Jim Gilchrist and his Minuteman Project. He was described (though misidentified as "Robert Cook") in a 2006 New York Times piece about vigilante border watchers.

The piece profiled a border watcher named Britt Craig, who appeared to be running a completely solo operation outside of Campo. This probably would not be exceptional, except that Craig refused to recognize the leadership of the Campo unit of Jim Gilchrist's Minuteman Project – namely, Robert Crooks, who so openly and aggressively insulted Craig on e-mails to his charges – calling him, among other things, "a swine who lives in a cat box" – that it eventually came to fisticuffs on the main street in Campo. Craig broke Crooks' glasses after the man refused to apologize for the insults.

Crooks had a falling out with Gilchrist a year later and formed his own outfit, calling it the Mountain Minutemen. Crooks sent Gilchrist a taunting e-mail, telling him he was a weakling who could "Talk the Talk" but not "Walk the Walk".

Attached was a video, shot through a night-vision scope, watching two or three men in the distance atop a hill, on the other side of a barbed-wire fence, surveying the ground. “All right, come on across, motherfuckers,” a man said quietly off camera. “Yeah, go that way. I dare you to go that way. That’s my fucking trail, bitch!” He keeps muttering for several minutes, calling his targets "cockroaches." Then he shouts out: “Hey putos [“faggots”], one, two, three!” – followed by the chambering sound of a shotgun shell, then a blast and a flash.

“This video shows how to keep a ‘Home Depot’ parking lot empty,” Crooks told Gilchrist. Gilchrist, whose Minuteman Project had earlier provided Crooks’ group with supplies, responded by banning Crooks from contact with his own group. When asked by reporters, Crooks denied being the shooter in the video.

A week later, a second video featuring the same night scope and the same shooter surfaced, and it was far more disturbing, because it purported to show the actual shooting of a border crosser with a backpack. Again, Crooks later admitted that the shooting was faked.

Cross-posted at Hatewatch. 

Reviving Orcinus: The fundraiser

I just wanted to make a brief reminder that, while I'm busy reviving this blog, I'm also just scraping by and am in need of whatever support you, the readers, are willing to toss my way. So far the fund-raising has been a modest success (a million deep thanks to those who have contributed), and I'm still hoping to do better.

I've already written about why Orcinus is worthy of your financial support:

I should also simply add that it's rare for journalists to take on the far right because they are quite capable of making your personal life difficult. Moreover, they are some of the most unpleasant people on the planet, and dealing with them -- let alone reporting on them -- is unpleasant in the extreme. I've had a number of colleagues jump off this beat for exactly that reason.

And since mainstream journalism is in raw survival/pure corporate mode these days, there is almost no interest in maintaining reporters on a terrorism beat, especially not one that includes right-wing extremism.

There is a real need for this kind of coverage, unpleasant as it may be. And I am not chased off so easily, in the fearless spirit of the animal who adorns the blog. So I will be maintaining this little space for the foreseeable, just so people can know where to come look for it when they need it.

The people who support Orcinus can see that we need this coverage now -- especially as the Republican Party sinks further into the madness Amato and I wrote about in Over the Cliff. If you are so inclined, please help as much as you can.

P.S. Be sure to check out my interview with Claudia Shambaugh of Orange County's KUCI-FM last week, discussing And Hell Followed With Her.

Far Right Embraces Book That Rewrites Matthew Shepard Case

Right-wing pundits, radio hosts and bloggers are celebrating a brand new book purporting to demonstrate that Matthew Shepard’s brutal 1998 murder in Wyoming was not an anti-gay hate crime, but rather a simple drug-motivated crime fueled by crystal methamphetamine. The book is capped by the sensational, and utterly unproven, claim that Shepard had previously engaged in gay sex with his eventual murderer.

These are not new claims — the allegation that the murder was primarily drug-fueled was in fact aired during the trial of Shepard’s killers. Similarly, claims that the chief perpetrator, Aaron McKinney, had had sex with Shepard, had previously surfaced. But McKinney has angrily denied those claims, and they are based on nothing more than hearsay evidence from questionable witnesses.

The book’s central assertions, in fact, are both factually flawed and, at bottom, profoundly irrelevant. They are also essentially recycled.

Indeed, The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths About the Murder of Matthew Shepard is the work of Stephen Jimenez, one of the producers of an ABC News “20/20” report in 2004 that was widely criticized by other journalists, gay-rights organizations and the Shepard family for its factual inaccuracies and distortions, as well as its clear bias. For instance, ABC News failed to reveal to its viewers that Jimenez was a longtime friend of the defense attorney for McKinney co-defendant Russell Henderson  who, when he pitched the story to ABC producers, had already reached his sensational conclusions — long before ABC’s reporters had begun doing actual investigative work.

A number of right-wing pundits have seized upon Jimenez’s book, which was just published on Sept. 24, to claim that the much of the justification for the nation’s anti-gay hate-crime laws — including the federal Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, signed into law by President Obama in 2009 — is little more than a fabric of lies. These pundits claim that the Shepard “mythology” has been used to fuel a “grievance industry” that is based on the supposedly false notion that hate crimes, in particular anti-LGBT hate crimes, are widespread.

Even before taking on that claim, it should be noted that regardless of the realities of the Shepard case and its many complexities, it was only a single if symbolically galvanizing case.

That said, the greater reality, denied by those who complain of a “grievance industry,” is that gay people are the most targeted minority in America for hate crime. According to a detailed analysis of FBI national hate crime statistics by the Southern Poverty Law Center, gay people are more than twice as likely to be attacked in a violent hate crime as black people or Jews, more than four times as likely as Muslims, and some 14 times as likely as Latinos.

Moreover, these FBI statistics have been well known for some time to vastly underreport the actual levels of hate crime for a variety of reasons. Recent studies by the federal government’s Bureau of Justice Statistics suggest that there are more than 250,000 hate crimes in America per year — not the 6,000 to 10,000 annual total that the FBI has reported since 1995. If those studies are correct, the real level of hate crimes in America is some 25 to 40 times higher than the numbers given in the FBI’s annual reports. Assuming that that also roughly applies to anti-LGBT hate crimes, of which there were about 1,100 reported by the FBI in its most recent report, then there may really be some 32,000 to 52,000 anti-LGBT hate crimes every year.

In any event, there are serious flaws with Jimenez’s attempt to rewrite the history around Matt Shepard’s murder now, just as there were 10 years ago with ABC News’ reportage. The most obvious is in the book’s central thesis — that anti-gay animus was not involved Shepard’s murder. Or, as U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) notoriously put it in 2009 in speaking out against the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act: “[W]e know that that young man was killed in the commitment of robbery. It wasn’t because he was gay. … [I]t’s really a hoax that continues to be used as an excuse for passing these bills.”

This conception of the nature of hate crimes is innately flawed. All bias crimes in fact are acts (including, say, robbery) which are already crimes but which are committed with a bias motive. More to the point, the presence of drugs as a factor doesn’t negate the concurrent presence of a bias motive.
Jimenez’s account omits central pieces of evidence which established clearly that it was no mere theory that McKinney had committed an anti-gay hate crime.

What we know, from multiple witness accounts at the trials, is this: Shepard, a 22-year-old student at the University of Wyoming, was openly gay, and was somewhat flamboyant about it, at least by Laramie standards. Hanging out in a local bar the night of Oct. 6, he managed to attract the attention of two local rednecks, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, who were looking for someone to rob, and picked Shepard because he was gay. They told Shepard they too were gay and offered to give him a ride home in their pickup truck, and Shepard accepted.

McKinney later gave multiple, conflicting accounts of what happened that night. He told a police detective that Shepard had not made any advances toward him at the bar, but that Shepard put his hand on McKinney’s leg inside the pickup, at which point McKinney told him: “Guess what? We’re not gay. You’re gonna get jacked.” From prison, he wrote to a friend that he started beating Shepard in the car because of an even more naked advance: “When we got out to where he was living, I got ready to draw down on his ass, and all of the sudden he said he was gay and wanted a piece of me. While he was ‘comming out of the closet’ he grabbed my nuts and licked my ear!! Being a verry drunk homofobic [sic] I flipped out and began to pistol whip the fag with my gun, ready at hand.”

Later, at trial, McKinney attempted to claim that Shepard had in fact made an advance on him at the bar, whispering a sexual proposition into his ear and then licking his lips suggestively. The humiliation he felt at the advance, he claimed, spurred a violent rage that made him want to beat Shepard. (The judge, however, struck down this testimony.)

Whatever the sequence of events and motivations, the three men wound up southeast of town in a remote area. McKinney and Henderson robbed Shepard and tied him up with rope. As Shepard begged for his life, McKinney proceeded to beat him severely, ultimately pulling out a gun and pistol-whipping him about the head. They left him to die, in the freezing night air, leaned up against a wooden rail fence.

It was in that pose that two mountain bikers found him, some 12 hours later, at first thinking he was a “scarecrow” someone had propped up on the fence. (Their original description created a popular image of Shepard strung up on the fence like a crucified martyr, though in fact his arms were tied behind him and he was seated on the ground.) He was barely alive, and lingered for another five days at the Laramie hospital before he finally died of his injuries.

Jimenez’s books also substantially omits evidence that was produced at the time establishing McKinney’s bias motivation. And indeed, McKinney not only did not deny the existence of this bias, he positively embraced it at trial by attempting a “gay panic” defense – claiming that he had “freaked out” at Shepard’s sexual advances and beaten him to death in anger – that ultimately failed before the jury.

There’s more. The lead investigator in the case, a detective named Rob DeBree, has repudiated the crystal meth theory. Debree told Beth Loffreda, author of Losing Matt Shepard: Life and Politics in the Aftermath of an Anti-Gay Murder, that “the murder didn’t look like any meth crime” he had seen. Debree said the attempt by McKinney’s defense team to paint him as being under the influence of crystal meth had no evidence to support it: There was no evidence, he said, of recent drug use “found in the search of their residences. There was no evidence in the truck. From everything we were able to investigate, the last time they would have done meth would have been up to two to three weeks previous to that night. What the defense attempted to do was a bluff.”

As Luke Brinker at Media Matter observes, it isn’t difficult to discern the motives of the right-wing pundits eager to embrace this revisionist smear of Matthew Shepard: “It’s also an opportunity to assail the LGBT community’s campaign for equal rights and protection from violence and bigotry,” Brinker wrote.

The Matthew Shepard Foundation, responding to the latest attack on the memory of Matt Shepard, issued a brief response: “Attempts now to rewrite the story of this hate crime appear to be based on untrustworthy sources, factual errors, rumors and innuendo rather than the actual evidence gathered by law enforcement and presented in a court of law. We do not respond to innuendo, rumor or conspiracy theories. Instead we recommit ourselves to honoring Matthew’s memory, and refuse to be intimidated by those who seek to tarnish it.”

Cross-posted at Hatewatch.

Ranting Ex-Police Chief Hooks Up With Vicious Radio Host for Show

Former Police Chief Mark Kessler didn't take long to bounce back from his firing by the borough council of Gilberton, Pa., where city fathers finally had enough of his expletive-laced and conspiracy-riddled "Patriot" rants on video.

Kessler now has a radio show. And for audiences eager to lap up angry-foul-mouthed anti-liberal rants alongside a heaping helping of right-wing conspiracism, he has partnered for the enterprise with another far-right figure, radio host Pete Santilli.

Santilli's idea of civil discourse is very similar to Kessler's. Last May, Santilli told listeners that he wanted he wanted to "shoot Hillary Clinton in the vagina" and then watch her slowly die afterward:

I want to shoot her right in the vagina and I don't want her to die right away; I want her to feel the pain and I want to look her in the eyes and I want to say, on behalf of all Americans that you've killed, on behalf of the Navy SEALS, the families of Navy SEAL Team Six who were involved in the fake hunt down of this Obama, Obama bin Laden thing, that whole fake scenario, because these Navy SEALS know the truth, they killed them all. On behalf of all of those people, I'm supporting our troops by saying we need to try, convict, and shoot Hillary Clinton in the vagina.

Kessler announced the radio show on his website, saying the show would be broadcast Mondays and Fridays for one hour. Santilli's regular show runs daily.

Santilli's hate-filled rants are reminiscent of those of another of his radio guests, Ted Nugent, who once told an audience onstage, waving an assault rifle, that he wished Clinton would "ride one of these into the sunset."

They also reflect the same kind of rhetoric Kessler spewed at length in the videos that got him fired:

“F*ck all you libtards out there, as a matter of fact, read my shirt,” he says, turning around to show a message on his back which read, “Liberals take it in the a**.”

“You take it in the ass and I don’t give a f*ck what you say so you can all just go f*ck yourselves. Period. I wont be going to D.C. and I don’t give a f*ck. If you f*cking maniacs want to turn this into an armed revolt, knock yourselves out. I’m not about that, so see you on the other side.”

In the wake of his termination, Kessler has turned conspiratorial on his own website:

The real reason he was suspended was because elites in Washington D.C. demanded his JOB for videos depicting the Chief exercising his First & second amendment right! although the Videos are spicy the Chief violated no policy, broke no law, because the chief stood his ground and said no more, no more will he stand idle and watch as his country crumbles, for this the Chief was selectively persecuted by elected elites who only want to instill their will onto Americans despite what we the people say! so now Gilberton, officials sided with tyranny, abandoned the constitution & folded like a deck of cards.

Kessler, when contacted by SPLC reporter Ryan Lenz about his termination, insisted he would take legal action against the Gilberton town fathers. And then he launched into a vicious verbal assault on the SPLC and Lenz.



“Russia needs good people. Why don’t you get on a boat, and take your whole organization with you?” Kessler said. “You’re disgusting. You’re vile creatures. You don’t belong in this country.”

Cross-posted at Hatewatch.

Why It's Important for Communities to Confront Nazis

(YouTube version here.)

It turns out that North Dakotans are more than happy to let neo-Nazis know they are not welcome to come in and take over their small towns.

Hundreds of protesters gathered in a North Dakota town on Sunday to speak out against plans by an American Nazi group to buy up property and take over the local government in an effort to build a bastion against diversity.

About 300 protesters, including some 200 Native Americans from nearby reservations, gathered outside the Leith City Hall where Jeff Schoep, leader of the National Socialist Movement presented his plans for turning the tiny North Dakota town  – population 24 – into a segregated place where whites can live among themselves. 

Native Americans in particular took an active role in  organizing the protests:

Various protest speakers took the mike and denounced the neo-Nazis peacefully, but emphatically. “We want the Nazis to know this is not a one day protest. We’ll be watching everything you do.” The protestors chanted, “No Nazis, no KKK!” A World War II Veteran said, “Let these creepy Nazi-Ku Klux people get out.” “Hey, hey! Ho ho! These Nazis have got to go!” the protesters chanted. “Our grandmothers will stand up to you! Our women will take you on!” one speaker said. “This is not your land. This is my land and you can go back home.” “On behalf of everybody here I’d like to say, go home.” “Go home, go home!” the crowd chanted.

Somewhat predictably, all this gets a mixed review from the hand-wringing conservatives at one of the leading North Dakota political blogs:

I admire what the folks at UnityND have done in organizing a social media and in-person response to the nazis, but in a way I think they’re helping those they oppose more than they like to realize.

I can’t help but feel as though the best response to the nazi “town hall” would have been no response at all.

It has to be cathartic to show up and scream at nazis. To call them names, mock their movement and denounce their bigoted ideology. I’ll bet that feels good, particularly for the large Native American contingent on hand who know a thing or two about racism, but what does it accomplish? Very little, as the right of these nazis to organize, hold meetings and purchase property is as sacrosanct as it is for any of the rest of us. Protesting isn’t going to stop them.

In fact, protesting gives them the one thing they need desperately from outside of their movement, and that’s attention.

These creeps live on the margins. Their ideas find few adherents. They have very little political and social clout. Except when they are given attention from outside of their movement.

They accomplish this by causing a stir. By doing and saying controversial things that fire up the public, and draw media attention.

Once upon a time -- when I was confronted with the decision on whether or not to devote news coverage to the activities of the neo-Nazi enclave known as the Aryan Nations -- I actually agreed with this.

And then I learned that following this advice -- ignoring the Nazis in the hope they will go away -- was a huge mistake. I have never forgotten it.

This was a debate with which I have become all too familiar over the years. I first dealt with it in the late 1970s, when I was the editor (something of a punk, at age 21) of the little daily in Sandpoint, Idaho, some 25 miles north of the new arrivals at Hayden Lake who called themselves the Aryan Nations.

I described some of my early encounters with the dilemma in Chapter 3 of In God's Country:

The letters all arrived the same way: neat, clean, carefully typed in all capitals. It was the neatness -- and the capitals -- that made them distinctive from many of the letters to the editor that crossed my desk at the Sandpoint Daily Bee. But after awhile, it was easy to recognize the correspondence from Robert Mathews.

The Bee was really a small-town paper; we only published five days a week and the paper itself was sometimes only ten or twelve pages thick. We didn't get all that many letters to the editor, so we treasured the few we got. You wrote a letter to us, it was probably going to get published.

Robert Mathews, though, was a little different story.

Mathews sent us letters regularly, one about every three or four weeks, from his home in Metaline Falls. This was actually out of the Bee's circulation area, and we knew he sent the same letters to our sister paper, the weekly Priest River Times, and its cross-river competitor, the Newport Miner. Since we preferred to publish letters from people who lived among our subscribers, we had an easy excuse not to run them.

There were better reasons, though. Almost inevitably, Mathews' missives were filled with anti-Semitic rants about the "Zionist Occupation Government" and the international banking conspiracy, at other times attacking "shiftless blacks" whose welfare burden was killing the nation with taxes. Yes, we welcomed an open debate on the pages of the Bee; but we felt like we had to draw a line when it came to spreading hate and falsehoods.

Most of Mathews' letters went directly to the "round file." Because he wrote so regularly, though, I looked for opportunities to reward his doggedness, deciding I would run the letters if they appeared free of racist or anti-Semitic references. This, however, never did occur.

Robert Mathews' letters were part of a disturbing tide of racial hate, and bizarre radical-right belief systems, that we had observed rising in the Northwest in the 1970s. The phenomenon was a puzzling one, especially for those of us in the newspaper business, because we were uncertain how to respond to it. Were we simply observing a few loud-mouthed ranters wishing to attract attention to themselves? And would covering them or allowing their hate to spew on our pages just give them the publicity, and the foothold, they sought? Would reporting on them just encourage them?

This was not the only context in which we discussed the Aryan Nations in our newsroom. We also discussed -- with the publisher/owner, Pete Thompson, in the mix -- whether or not we should even cover the activities at the compound, as well as some of the hateful material its followers trafficked in beyond even letters to the editor. And we decided not to. With our resources limited in the first place, it seemed as though giving their fringe fantasies about creating a "white Northwest" was not just a waste of space, but something that might actually help distribute those views and, worse yet, recruit fresh followers.

The moral of this story, of course, is that Robert Mathews was not just a typical writer of letters to the editor. Some four years later, he would organize a group of extremist revolutionaries who called themselves the Bruders Schweigen (Silent Brotherhood), more popularly known as The Order. By the time their yearlong crime spree was done, they ended up with an astonishing record of havoc in their wake: some twenty-odd bank robberies and armored-car stickups, including the largest take in an overland-carrier holdup in history ($3.6 million from a Wells Fargo armored car in Ukiah, Calif.); operating a large counterfeiting ring; and most notoriously, the assassination of Denver radio talk-show host Alan Berg.

As I noted in the book, the Daily Bee changed its policies by the time it was all over. In his last week alive, Mathews penned a long letter and sent it to a few newspapers, including the little paper in Sandpoint. A few days later, he was cornered by the FBI on Whidbey Island and went out in a blaze of glory, remaining inside his cabin after an incendiary device was lobbed into it. The Bee finally ran that letter.

What that incident, and many subsequent cases, convinced me of was this: We can never let our guard down when it comes to fascists and fascism -- especially when it is the real thing. We dismiss them as inconsequential at our extreme peril.

It's not that the counterpoint is meritless:

There is, in fact, a real danger that giving liars like the Holocaust deniers and the neo-Nazis any kind of publicity at all will help them spread their poison and gain new followers. In fact, it's almost certain that this will happen to at least a minor extent. However, that problem is far outweighed by the extent to which the larger society can see this kind of activity for what it is. In this sense, the kind of reporting that's done is essential; if it's shallow reporting that resorts to a phony "balancing" act, then the more likely the extremists are to succeed; the more grounded and in-depth it is, the more likely you are to blunt any potential recruitment effect.

Worse, trying to create an information vacuum only leaves society even more vulnerable. Pretending they don't exist, for one thing, plays into extremists' own mythology, particularly the belief that the "mainstream media" don't "dare" to run their conspiracy theories because it's the "truth". It also means that the widespread opprobrium they should be hearing is absent. Haters love to believe they're carrying out what the rest of society really, secretly, wants, but no one dares say so because of "political correctness."

Haters and racists thrive in darkness, and they thrive on silence. They look for approval from whatever source they can muster. For them, silence equals tacit approval.

But paying attention to haters and, moreover, standing up to them requires both constant vigilance and a keen awareness of the dangers inherent in doing so. In my experience, the best response it to make a complete mockery of them, as a crowd of counter-protesters did several years ago in Olympia. (Talk about a bunch of guys going home with their heads down and their tails between their legs.)

The important thing, though, is for these communities to be able to stand up and say "Not In Our Town". And this time it was successful.

Anti-LGBT Zealot Scott Lively Claims Credit for Inspiring Russia’s Laws

Anti-gay activist Scott Lively is known both for his bizarre theories – notably his long-running thesis that gays were responsible for the Holocaust – and for his ability to stir up anti-gay sentiment abroad, particularly in places like Uganda, for which he eagerly claims credit.

His latest claims and theories fit the pattern: Lively now claims that he inspired Russian President Vladimir Putin – whom he warmly describes as “the only world leader capable of standing up to the West … championing the traditional marriage and Christian values” – to sign a ban on “homosexual propaganda” into law. Oh, and by the way, President Obama seems also to probably be the Antichrist.

NBC News’ Tony Dokoupil interviewed Lively recently, and Lively repeated his previous claim that he inspired the spate of anti-gay legislation that has been passed in Russia in recent years. “Yes, I think I influenced the Russian law,” Lively said.

The report noted that there is some substance to the claim. Boris Dittricht, the chief LGBT advocate for Human Rights Watch, notes that there was no shortage of homophobia in Russian culture before Lively arrived, but observed that “the American pastor appears to have given shape to that free-floating hatred.” Dittrich noted that public bans on homosexual propaganda followed shortly after Lively would pass through those regions, preaching and promoting just such a solution by meeting with politicians and appearing with them in public. Before Putin made it a national standard, more than a half-dozen areas had passed such bans.

Fairly typical of the eliminationist rhetoric that Lively deployed while touring Russia appear in video as part of the NBC report: “There is a war that is going on in the world,” Lively is seen telling a Novosibirsk crowd through a translator. “There is a war that is waging across the entire face of the globe. It’s been waging in the United States for decades, and it’s been waging in Europe for decades. It’s a war between Christians and homosexuals.”

Lively responded with dismay on his own website to the NBC report, claiming that “this isn’t journalism. It is leftist political spin.”

“My major beef with Tony and all of the ‘progressive’ journalists who dominate the mainstream media is that their ‘news’ stories always reflect the ‘gay’ perspective of what is still a two-sided argument,” Lively responded. He concluded that “the first loyalty of progressive journalists is to their ideology, not to truth.”

Lively also soft-pedaled the surge of anti-gay violence – much of it committed by openly fascist skinhead factions, as Russia’s neo-Nazi movement has swelled in numbers at the same time – that has accompanied Putin’s anti-gay campaign, including videos that portray neo-Nazis kidnapping and torturing young gay man.

Lively shrugs it off: “And the Russian incident appears to me to be another case of gay on gay crime, but even if it isn’t, it’s just random crime completely unrelated to and unjustified by the new Russian law.”

Meanwhile, Lively earlier this week appeared on the evangelical End Times radio show TruNews with host Rick Wiles and explained that the Apocalypse was at hand because of the alignment of current events. And he made clear, without naming him, that President Obama himself is the Antichrist, and that he is secretly colluding with satanic gays to bring about the end of the world:

So at the right time, after there’s been enough pain, what happens is the Antichrist—I won’t name any names here but he is heading the largest superpower of the world today—steps in at the right time and does three things. He declares a global jubilee in which all the debts of the world are eliminated …

Lively began his anti-gay career in Oregon in the 1990s, leading the charge of the right-wing Oregon Citizens Alliance as it sponsored a seemingly endless array of anti-gay initiatives, including a 1992 ballot measure that would have prohibited all authorities in the state from trying to "promote, encourage or facilitate homosexuality, pedophilia, sadism or masochism." He rose to stardom among some right-wing evangelicals for his 1995 book The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party, which contended that it was actually a secret faction of gay Nazis who engineered the Holocaust.

His virulently anti-gay organization, Watchmen on the Walls, has been noted for forming alliances with far-right evangelicals in Eastern Europe and Africa.

Cross-posted at Hatewatch.

'Secessionist' Movements Underscore the Far Right's Hatred of Democracy

If you needed a reminder where those folks on the far right who naive mainstream Democrats keep mistakenly treating as rational actors are coming from, just survey the "secessionist" campaigns in various states, most notably Maryland at present.

One of the leaders of a group of western Maryland counties' efforts to secede and form a 51st state (good luck with that), a fellow named Steve Strelczyk, appeared on Fox's America Live yesterday and explained himself, sorta -- brushing off the obvious question: Well, you live in a democracy; are you just unwilling to live by majority rule?

STRELCZYK: In some sort of way, that could be correct. However, the real issue that we see in this state, I think the primary issue, is the fact that the state has been so badly gerrymandered. ... Through the normal electoral process we cannot even change that. So we don't feel that we are being represented there, our needs aren't taken into account, and we simply feel that our differences are irreconcilable, so therefore we are seeking an amicable divorce.

He went on to explain that they planned to create their own state.

Fox News gives the proponents' view:

Strzelczyk said the biggest concerns are increasing taxes, and the Democrat-controlled legislature gerrymander voting district so that the state’s big metropolitan areas have the most representation and tighter gun laws enacted this year, which he calls “the last straw.”
The movement is just one of several across the country that includes the Upper Peninsula in Michigan, Northern California and several conservative northern Colorado counties.
The Colorado effort is backed by the Tea Party movement and has gotten the issue put on the November ballot as a non-binding referendum. The movement was also driven in large part by state lawmakers passing tighter gun-control legislation this year that was signed by Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper.

... Still, secession will not be easy, for a variety of reasons, including that many of these remote, rural regions rely on money generated in their state’s more commercial and populated cities. And secession leaders would need state and federal approval, which seems unlikely considering the last time a region broke off was 1863, when 50 western Virginia counties split to form West Virginia.

As he always does, Joshua Holland clearly and capably explains what's going on here:

Bizarre as it seems, the effort is part of a trend. In Colorado, up to 10 rural counties want to break off and form a new state called Northern Colorado. A handful of counties in Kansas and Nebraska are reportedly thinking about joining them. Several counties in Northern California are hoping to combine with a chunk of Southern Oregon to form the state of Jefferson – an old idea that apparently hasn’t gone out of fashion. And folks in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula fed up with Lansing have also been kicking around the idea of cutting loose.

The media have framed these stories as a symptom of a growing rural-urban divide, and that’s true. Gun safety laws enacted after the Sandy Hook shootings sparked the move in both Colorado and Maryland. Marriage equality for gays and lesbians, and differences over energy policy, immigration (over which state governments have little control) and taxes are often cited as “irreconcilable differences” by these secession advocates.
But it’s also another sign of the difficulty that a group which dominated American politics just a generation ago – a group political scientist Alan Abramowitz narrowed down to married white people who identify as Christians – are having adapting to a country that’s becoming more diverse and embracing a different, more liberal set of cultural values. As Michael Rosenwald noted in The Washington Post, “with secessionists, the term ‘final straw’ comes up a lot.”

An analysis of Census data by Moyers & Company found that non-Hispanic whites make up 93.5 percent of the rebellious Colorado counties, a higher share than the 87.7 percent of the rest of the state’s population. Unsurprisingly, there’s also a significant partisan gap — only around 39 percent of those living in the break-away North voted for Obama in 2012, while the rest of the state supported him by a 52-46 margin, according to an analysis of election returns.

Those divides are even more dramatic in Maryland, where a 26-point gap in presidential preferences separates the five counties considering secession from the rest of the state. Breakaway Maryland is 85 percent white, while whites make up just 51 percent of the population in the rest of the counties, according to a Washington Post analysis.

Go read it all.

This is the reaction we've come to know and expect from people on the hardnosed edges of the American right: At the end of the day, they don't really believe in democracy. They don't believe in putting up with other citizens who believe differently, who pray differently, who dress and wear their hair and their clothes differently and eat differently and most of all who think differently from them.
They like the idea of America as a big all-white nation. They don't like the idea of America as a democracy.

Their antipathy to democracy always creeps out, even in their conspiracy theories (how many times have we heard the far-right refrain, "This is a republic, not a democracy!"), but more importantly in their actions and their political strategies, embodied most recently in the gutting of the Voting Rights Act and the ongoing efforts at voter suppression by conservative Republicans.

And when they realize they are not going to get their way, their solution is not to accept the verdict of democracy. Their solution is to drop out.

That's why we get people like the Threepers and the white supremacists who want to form their own enclaves off somewhere in the woods.

In the 1990s, we had survivalists, "Freemen," Patriot-movement militiamen, "sovereign citizens," and various cranks doing similar things here in the Northwest woods. Here in western Washington, we had far-right factions in rural areas that attempted to secede from the large urban counties in western Washington.

It's always the same old story. And at the end of the day, what they really hate most of all is democracy.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Russia's Gay-Bashing Politics Look Like a Descent Into Fascism

We've all been shocked at the vicious nature of Russia's official embrace of anti-gay politics, but we should all be deeply concerned too -- because what we appear to be witnessing is the descent of post-Communist Russia into a fascist state.

First Russian officials passed an Orwellian law banning gay "propaganda," making potentially anyone even remotely sympathetic to LGBT people into criminals. That was followed by the appearance of neo-Nazi thugs on the scene, attacking any gay-rights demonstrators with open violence. The official response to these attacks was instructive: Police either stood by as the thugs attacked gays, or they themselves arrested gay demonstrators and carted them off.

Russian journalist Masha Gessen has been saying this openly:

"What they're doing with this law is they're enshrining second-class citizenship," she added. "So in that sense it's very much like the laws in Nazi Germany. It makes it a crime to say that a group is socially equal to another group. So I said this is creeping Fascism, and if you don't want us to become a Fascist country, then don't just stand by, put on a pink triangle."

Moreover, officials are openly encouraging the violence by making clear that it's justified and won't be prosecuted:

Vitaly Milonov, a deputy in the St. Petersburg legislative assembly from United Russia, is co-author of the notorious law forbidding “promotion of homosexuality.” He blamed the incident in the club on gay people themselves. He said in an interview with Snob.ru that the incident was the ”result of the obnoxious, crude and permissive behavior of the gay community. …What other reaction could there be when, in response to democratic actions, they run around like jackals at consulates, beg for another grant and write letters demanding that the authorities be punished? This is a warning to the gay community so that they don’t forget that they live in the Russian Federation, a country with a healthy historical and cultural legacy.”

In case anyone missed that, let us spell it out in plain English: an elected official from Russia’s second largest city, its so-called “window on Europe,” has condoned mob violence against a particular group of his fellow citizens, blaming them—the victims—for the attack. This is fascism.

Oh, and remember Pussy Riot’s desperate attempt to warn their own fellow citizens and the rest of the world about the dangers of a fusion of church and state in Russia? Well, here’s what you get when the merger is a done deal and the gloves come off:

Sergei Rybko, a Russian Orthodox priest, spoke out more forcefully. “The Holy Scriptures instruct us to cast stones at all those guys with nontraditional orientation. As long as that scum is not banished from Russian land, I completely agree with people who are trying to cleanse our homeland of them. If the government won’t do it, then the people will,” he said an interview with Pravoslaviye i Mir (Orthodoxy and the World). He added that he regretted that because he is a priest, “he couldn’t take part in actions of this sort.”

Nor is it an exaggeration to observe that this is classic far-right fascism, with gay people playing the role of the old fascists' Jews as chief scapegoat, whipping boy and otherwise expiative target for violence.

That's because, according to observers in Russia, the Putin regime and its official right-wing cohort have been actively courting and supporting the activities of various far-right entities in Russia, including a variety of skinhead and neo-Nazi factions.

This is from a Marxist source, but appears generally accurate, reflecting a number of similar reports from inside Russia:

The anti-gay law is not just another law that seeks to villify LGBTQ people and their very existence, but this move by regime is a capitulation to Russian neo-Nazi organisations to further terrorise LGBTQ people. Police complicity with fascists already has a history in Russia and Putin’s regime has sponsored nationalists in the Rodina party, and the neo-nazi Nashi youth organisation to attack and discredit challenges to the regime from the Communist Party and Russian youth. From watching videos of the recent attacks on LGBTQ people, police often stand back and let homophobic and transphobic assaults continue with little or no intervention. Protesters recall previous pride demonstrations (which have been increasingly bigger targets for anti-queer violence) where cops were seen allowing fascists into vans where arrested protesters were being held, suggesting the police work with or are members of neo-Nazi groups.

Neo-Nazi group Format18 and their infamous spokesperson Maxim Martsinkevich (nicknamed Tesak, or ‘hatchet’) have lead the attacks on LGBTQ youth that claim to target paedophiles on the internet. However this is a lie; they put up fake profiles on social networking sites and arrange to meet with LGBTQ youth for a date, only to kidnap, torture, rape and even kill them – all without prosecution by the state. Many of the young people that this group have targeted have subsequently had videos and photos of their kidnap and torture put on the internet, causing them to be outed, humiliated and often driven to suicide.

The victims of the far-right are not just LGBTQ people, the fascists also attack black people, immigrants and various religious groups, in order to scapegoat them – one high profile attack in 2006 by neo-Nazis in St. Petersburg ended in the death of a Sengalese student, Lamzar Samba.

Nor is it any accident that this is happening. It's been brewing for awhile now; these people are well-organized, and some reports indicate the ranks of neo-Nazis have swelled to 100,000 and more in recent years.

And all this has its sources in far-right radicals from the United States and elsewhere.

Back when he was rehabilitating his career after spending time in prison for fraud related to his gambling addiction, David Duke spent a great deal of time organizing neo-Nazis in Russia:

White supremacist David Duke has set his sights on Russia. Saying that the nation holds the "key to white survival," Duke has recently embarked on a campaign to spread his racial theories of white superiority and anti-Semitism in the former Soviet Union. The notorious American hatemonger has recently launched an appeal to Russian nationalists. In Duke’s eyes, Russia presents an unmatched opportunity to help protect the longevity of the white race, since he predicts that "racially aware" parties could achieve political influence there. He believes that Russia’s "sense of racial understanding" will unleash a trend internationally.

Duke has taken at least three recent trips to Russia to speak with nationalists and to promote his new book, The Ultimate Supremacism: My Awakening on the Jewish Question (the Russian title translates as The Jewish Question Through the Eyes of an American). Duke has indicated he may move there to more actively "struggle against people of other colors and with Jews," according to the Interfax news agency.

During his visits to Russia, Duke has held a rally at a respected literary museum and met with nationalist leaders there, including former Communist lawmaker General Albert Makashov, a figure well known for anti-Semitic statements. Duke went to Russia this past summer at the invitation of Alexander Prokhanov, editor-in-chief of Zavtra (Tomorrow), an ultra-nationalist newspaper, and Konstnatin Kasimovsky, the head of an anti-Semitic organization called Russian Action. At the time, several Russian nationalist publications ran reports on Duke’s visit to Moscow. An Internet forum of Russian neo-Nazi skinheads praised the meeting with Duke, who was termed "a well-known American patriot."

This organizing appears to have melded with another branch of far-right activism in Russia, also with its roots in American radicals -- the virulent anti-gay radicals who blame the Holocaust on gays and sponsor anti-gay legislation in places such as Africa and in Eastern Europe.

The largest of these organizations calls themselves the Watchmen on the Walls, and they represent a coalition of Russian-American, American, and Russian right-wingers whose loathing of LGBT people and their rights knows no bounds.

One of the Watchmen's leading figures is a Holocaust revisionist named Scott Lively, who blames Teh Gay for the deaths of millions during World War II. And these are the kinds of things he's prone to pronouncing:

And in the United States where the sexual revolution began, it was the homosexual political movement that designed this strategy to attack Christianity. The homosexual movement teaches sexual freedom, and its first target is the heterosexual people. The homosexual activists stayed hidden but they taught this philosophy through their activists. And out of the philosophy came the principalities and powers that is destroying the West: The pornography industry, the abortion industry, and the destruction of marriage through divorce. These things are the product of a way of thinking. They deny the Truth of God. They deny the design of God for human beings. And their purpose is the change the cultures of the world.

Now, the homosexual movement has been winning this war in the United States, and it has been winning this war in Europe. And we’re looking at the future collapse of Western civilization. And Watchmen on the Walls is an organization to fight against this collapse. Watchmen On the Walls is an organization of men and women with courage, who will stand on the Truth of God and without compromise demand that the culture will follow the guidance of God. That marriage and family must be held at the highest level.”

Lively once gave a talk wherein he described, in a jocular fashion, the bashing death of a gay man by Russian nationals in Sacramento.

Moreover, Lively has taken a leading role in attempts to outlaw homosexuality in Uganda, and he's now taking credit -- with some cause -- for the anti-gay legislation in Russia:

"I can’t point to any country of the world today that is a model for the rest of the world, except perhaps for Russia, which has just taken the very important and frankly necessary step of criminalizing homosexual propaganda to protect the society from being 'homosexualzed.' This was one of my recommendation to Russian leaders in my 50-city tour of the former Soviet Union in 2006 and 2007.

"I strongly advise that you adopt an anti-propaganda law similar to what Russia has recently passed, to stop the 'gay' agenda from advancing any further that it may already have done. It will also be necessary to uproot and discard any existing sexual orientation regulations (the bad seeds) which criminalize discrimination against homosexuality in your laws and in the official policies of your government agencies, universities, corporations, and NGOs."

It's also worth noting that Lively was a significant source of misinformation for Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, another attempt to whitewash away the common ground between genuine street fascists and the mainstream right. But now that common ground is making itself manifest in Russia.

The most disturbing component of all this is the open collusion between authorities and these far-right thugs. That is the classic manifestation of genuine fascism as we have known it historically; the examples of Germany and Italy in the 1920s are always there to remind us:

Fascist violence was neither random nor indiscriminate. It carried a well-calculated set of coded messages: that communist violence was rising, that the democratic state was responding to it ineptly, and that only the fascists were tough enough to save the nation from antinational terrorists. An essential step in the fascist march to acceptance and power was to persuade law-and-order conservatives and members of the middle class to tolerate fascist violence as a harsh necessity in the face of Left provocation. It helped, of course, that many ordinary citizens never feared fascist violence against themselves, because they were reassured that it was reserved for national enemies and "terrorists" who deserved it.

Now it's all the straight, non-gay Russians and other Eastern Europeans who are standing by and watching this trend develop, knowing that they will not be targeted for the fascists' violence ... this round. When they gain real power, well, that will be a different story.

If people in the West do not awaken to the nature of the beast that is taking root in Russia and Eastern Europe, all in the guise of gay bashing and "defending traditional marriage", they will live to regret it.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.