The oft-delayed Arizona trial of erstwhile Minuteman leader Chris Simcox on
child-molestation charges has blown up once again, thanks primarily to
Simcox’s insistence on having the right to personally cross-examine his
alleged victims — two young girls aged 7 and 8.
Now, according to a report by Stephen Lemons of the Phoenix New Times,
Judge Padilla has conceded to Simcox’s counter-argument — namely, that
he should be permitted to directly cross-examine the two girls because
doing so is “a crucial cornerstone of his desire to present his best
defense.” Padilla ruled in a hearing Thursday afternoon that Simcox
would be allowed to question the girls, who were 5 and 6 years old when
the crimes allegedly occurred.
But Padilla refused to remove himself from the trial, which Simcox had also requested.
According to The Associated Press,
prosecutors plan to immediately file an appeal of Padilla’s ruling,
meaning the trial — which had already been delayed nine times since
Simcox’s arrest in July 2013 — is likely to last into the summer. Lemons
reported that deputy county attorney Kelli Luther argued strenuously
against allowing Simcox to “control his own victims in the courtroom,”
pointing to U.S. Supreme Court and federal appellate court rulings
allowing for special accommodations to be made in similar instances.
However, Padilla said he would need evidence that the children are
traumatized at the prospect of being interrogated by their alleged
molester, and brushed aside letters from the girls’ mothers attesting to
that effect: “With all due respect,” he said, “[the mothers] are simply
not qualified to make that assessment.”
In the filing made this week, Simcox argues that the children “were
never subjected to … harm in the first place,” so the county attorney is
“asking the court to find the defendant guilty … before the trial has
even begun.”
Simcox was originally charged with
also molesting a third little girl, whom Simcox allegedly bribed with
candy to expose her genitals, but those charges were dropped after the
grand jury chose not to indict him in that case. However, that girl is
expected to be a prosecution witness as well.
Simcox’s trial was most recently scheduled to begin March 24.
However, when attorneys gathered in Padilla’s courtroom that day, they
were informed that Simcox was in the hospital, for reasons that could
not be disclosed under medical-privacy laws, and would be there for a
week. At a pretrial conference on Thursday, Judge Padilla scheduled jury
selection to begin on April 6.
But if the prosecutors proceed to take the ruling on the girls’
testimony to an appeals court, that schedule seems unlikely at best.
During his heyday as a Minuteman leader, Simcox liked to pose for reporters with a gun down the front of his jeans.
These developments are the latest in a long and twisted road to trial for Simcox, who previously had suggested he would present a “grand conspiracy” defense
that he had been targeted for prosecution, and the evidence against him
invented, because of his prominent role as a leader and co-founder of
the nativist extremism group called the Minutemen. The judge later
informed him that such a defense would not be allowed.
At the height of the border vigilante movement, Simcox was president of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps,
a nationwide, anti-immigration organization that led armed “citizen
border patrols” in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas, along with
a smattering of states on the Canadian border where Minutemen had
deployed to protect America from northern invaders. Never modest, the
cigar-chomping Simcox was a hyper and relentless self-aggrandizer who
came across with the smug egotism that quickly earned him the nickname
“The Little Prince.”
He was known for over-the-top claims, like his repeated assertion
that he had seen Chinese Red Army men at the Mexican border, preparing
to attack the U.S. Nevertheless, he was featured repeatedly on Lou
Dobbs’ CNN show and a plethora of shows on Fox News, where he was
treated as a serious critic of immigration policy.
But even then, there were allegations of sexual abuse. As the SPLC reported in 2005,
Simcox was accused by his first wife of molesting another daughter when
she was a teenager, although no complaint was ever made to police. His
second wife also sought custody of their teenage son because, she said,
Simcox had become violent and unpredictable. His third wife — the mother
of his current accuser — took out a restraining order against Simcox in 2010 when she divorced him.
Beneath ominous music, the voice of the narrator strikes a strident
chord, feverishly warning viewers: “Attention! President Obama is
exercising another executive power grab! And this time, he is going
directly after your Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms!”
Sounding for all the world like an Alex Jones or Oath Keepers
production, the video ad then launches into a paranoid description of
Obama’s supposed plot to destroy the Second Amendment.
“The Obama administration was unable to impose gun restrictions and
confiscation through the legislative process, so now it’s trying to ban
commonly used ammunition through regulation. Obama must be stopped now!
If we allow Obama to ban ammunition through executive fiat now, it will
lead to the loss of our Second Amendment rights by the time Obama leaves
office!”
Of course, as with most similar efforts at fearmongering over the
Obama administration’s handling of gun rights and gun control, the
reality regarding the supposed plot to destroy Americans’ gun rights is a
far cry from what’s depicted in the ads: There was never an executive
order being considered about the ammunition, as the ad suggests; and the
brief consideration by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives (ATF) of altering regulations of a narrow bandwidth of
armor-piercing bullets had already been abruptly abandoned several weeks
ago.
Indeed, with only 19 months remaining in office, the long-feared
Obama “gun grab” that gun-rights and antigovernment “Patriot” groups
(not to mention Jones and Co.) have feverishly warned the public against
since at least 2008 appears far from ever materializing. The
organization behind the ads, however, is not a run-of-the-mill far-right
“Patriot” group, but presents itself as a mainstream gun-rights group,
the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF).
The regulation in question – actually an ATF proposal to alter its regulation framework
for certain types of ammo used in AR-15 semi-automatic weapons,
especially those such as armor-piercing types that seemed unlikely to be
used “primarily for sporting purposes” – was met with fierce opposition
in early March by the Second Amendment Foundation, who launched the ad campaign with the incendiary video in early March.
However, the ATF recoiled quickly
from the negative response generated by the video ad, and on March 10
withdrew the proposal and closed off comments by noting that “the vast
majority of comments received to date are critical of the framework.”
Nonetheless, the SAF’s ads have continued to run, appearing on
national media outlets such as CNN and Fox News, as well as at
conservative outlets such as The Blaze. They direct viewers to an 800
phone number that, if dialed, collects the callers’ names and adds them
to an SAF petition opposing any regulatory change for the ammunition, as
well as the outfit’s potential donor database.
SAF spokesman David Workman told me that the non-profit organization
had invested “several hundred thousand dollars” in the campaign, and the
ads would cease appearing once the ad buy had expired, probably in
early April. And besides, he added, his organization didn’t believe that
the administration had fully retreated yet.
“When ATF pulled back on it, they didn’t say the idea was dead,”
Workman said. “They’re going to go back and re-examine it, see how to
present it to the public so it doesn’t generate 310,000 comments. We
don’t believe this is a dead idea.”
ATF spokeswoman Danette Seward told the Washington Post that
the proposed "green tip" ammo ban came from the ATF's decision to
review all ammo exemptions to a 1986 law that had sought to crack down
on “cop killer” bullets. Seward said the agency had seen a recent
increase in the number of "sporting purposes" exemptions requested by
ammunition manufacturers for the AR-15 ammo. Moreover, she said, the
agency wanted to strip the “green tip” armor-piercing ammo because AR-15
handguns capable of firing the rounds have recently become available.
The White House had issued a statement
calling the regulation change “common sense,” but at no time did it
ever indicate that the president would make the regulation through
executive action. Press Secretary Josh Earnest, likewise, had told reporters
that this was an action by the ATF under its standard procedures,
noting: “I’d put this in the category of common-sense steps that the
government can take to protect the Second Amendment rights of
law-abiding Americans while also making sure that our law enforcement
officers who are walking the beat every day can do their jobs just a
little bit more safely.”
Workman explained that the seemingly hysterical conclusion of the
ad’s narrator that the failed change in rules for the AR-15 ammunition
could doom every citizen’s guns rights could be seen as rational, if one
saw any gun regulation at all as a kind of slippery slope.
“If people can be convinced that it’s OK to ban one type of
ammunition, it will be easier to sell the idea that it’s OK to ban
another type of ammunition,” Workman said. “And then we’ll get right
back to where we were before, he’ll want to ban a whole class of
firearms. They’ve tried to do that before.”
He thought that raising fears about an Obama plot against citizens’
gun rights was legitimate, regardless of Obama’s prior lack of action on
gun control. “You can go ahead and think what you want, but there are a
lot of people out there who are very concerned about this
administration’s designs on gun control,” he said. “Whether it starts
with an ammunition ban or some other sort of regulation, it is still
viewed by millions of people as an attempt to erode their basic right to
keep and bear arms.”
Thanks in no small part to a barrage of misleading ad campaigns.
Midway through the
Q&A, a woman no one knew stood up and waved some papers and asked
Hargrove if he had been arrested for domestic violence and assault
against his sister. Hargrove made clear to everyone that this was a
baldfaced falsehood. There were some boos, and the woman shrank away into the woodwork.
Mind you, I am friends with some authors who attract controversy -- especially Rick Perlstein and Max Blumenthal -- and so of course there are always some kooks at their public speaking appearances, at least in Seattle. But they're usually of the black-helicopter variety, if you know what I mean. I'd never seen anyone try to smear an author in public with an unprovable and ugly accusation that had nothing to do with the subject at hand.
Well, let me correct that: I have seen this kind of intimidation by smear campaign previously. It's the kind of thing that
everyone who has ever dealt with Scientology has had to confront,
particularly when it comes to former members exposing their secrets.
And make no mistake: Hargrove has been scoring consistently against SeaWorld, particularly as he discusses the difficulties orca trainers face, embodied by the 2010 death of his colleague Dawn Brancheau at the hands of the largest orca in captivity, Tilikum, at SeaWorld Orlando. His appearance with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show was also a smash hit:
All the week I had been making jokes on Facebook comparing SeaWorld to Scientology -- a timely comparison, given the appearance of the documentary Going Clear on HBO. The film is in many ways just a distillation of Lawrence Wright's magisterial work of investigative journalism of the same title. "I'm becoming convinced that SeaWorld is the theme-park equivalent of
Scientology: a cult that relies on abusive practices and intentional
self-delusion/prevarication to sustain itself," I wrote. OK, I wasn't really joking.
And then on Monday night, there was that strange woman trying to smear him with an accusation that, even if true, has not a single freaking thing to do with the issue that Hargrove has been confronting -- namely, the abusive and coercive and ultimately inhumane practices in its treatment both of its captive killer whales as well as the people who have the jobs of handling and caring for them.
Analogy confirmed. In spades.
And the craziest part is that the smear artists were just getting started.
The very next day, one of the more pestilent corners of the wingnutosphere posted a video showing a drunken John Hargrove harassing a friend on the phone with the repeated and thoughtless use of the N-word, delivered with a Texas twang. Within the day, even as one San Diego area bookstore canceled Hargrove's appearance, the video was then being promoted to various media outlets avidly by none other than Fred Jacobs, SeaWorld's chief communications officer.
SeaWorld spokesman Fred
Jacobs said in [an] email that “we believe it is important that you see
this video we received just this weekend from an internal
whistleblower.”
“Anyone interviewing the
“Blackfish” star should certainly be aware of it,” Jacobs said in the
email. “We are offended by John’s behavior and language. The video is
particularly reprehensible since John Hargrove is wearing a SeaWorld
shirt. SeaWorld would have terminated Hargrove’s employment immediately
had we known he engaged in this kind of behavior.”
Hargrove was appropriately embarrassed, as well he should have been. It's a video that shows him at his worst -- thoughtless, arrogant, ignorant, and mean. And his initial response -- "I remember parts of that night and drinking,
and you can clearly tell we definitely had a lot to drink. But that
video is taken completely out of context. There’s not a proper beginning
or end" -- was inadequate.
But he's since been more forthcoming, more like the John Hargrove most of us who have met him know now. He told KPBS: “I don’t think that it will for the people who truly know me ... It’s certainly offensive language and it should’ve never been used. I
was so heavily intoxicated — I barely recall any of those events.
Clearly, it’s not funny.”
First I will make clear I take full responsibility for my actions and I
cringed when I watched the video from 5 years ago- a night I barely
remember when it happened and even less of 5 years after the fact. There
is no place EVER for the N word. This is a word tied with a horrific
history that as a white person I cannot even fully understand the depth
of pain this caused black people. I certainly regret my actions that
night. I would not expect anyone to defend that conversation where I
used the N word. I am extremely disappointed that my words could cause
more pain to a minority group. Regardless if you are in a private home
and drunk and think you are harmlessly being funny- this word should
never be used.
... Tonight at my book signing in LA, I had an exchange with an black
man that will stay with me for the rest of my life. He was intelligent,
articulate, and completely genuine. He began by saying that he and his
friends have followed and supported me from the beginning I began to
speak out and admired my courage by doing so. They believe in what we
are all fighting for and have held me in high regard and respected me
but when he saw the video he looked me straight in the eyes and said
that it truly hurt him and wanted to hear directly from me what I
had to say regarding that video and if I was willing to personally
apologize to him.
I was both impressed and humbed and felt even worse
actually seeing a face of this young black man who respected me but had
now been hurt by me. This was an amazing human being and without
hesitation or making any excuses I sincerely apologized to him to his
face and explained as I said earlier that even though I know it is NEVER
acceptable to use this word that as a white man I don't pretend to ever
be able to fully understand the pain this word has caused him
personally or any other black person.
He had already bought my
book and stayed to go through the line to have me sign his book. We
shook hands and had a real and genuine understanding and forgiveness in
the end. I was humbled and had so much respect for him in how he chose
to conduct himself. I will never forget that exchange. He deserved my
answers and my apology and he accepted them and chose to forgive me. And
for that I am very grateful. That exchange was truly powerful and
witnessed by a packed room in the book store.
As someone whose regular business entails confronting racism, there's nothing amusing about the video or Hargrove's participation in it. But as someone whose work also entails assessing evidence regarding whether someone is a serious racist, I have only one question: What, are you freaking kidding me?
This video was recorded five years ago. Hargrove is clearly intoxicated. He clearly thinks he is being amusing. The only other person who seems to think he's amusing is the person recording the thing, who we can all similarly presume to be the person who leaked the video of their onetime friend. Clearly the woman on the other end is not much amused, especially as Hargrove makes fun of her for dropping the N-bomb as well. This is ugly stuff, but I can also assure you that it is common, everyday stuff that a million thoughtless white Americans privately indulge every single day. It's also an extraordinarily transparent smear attempt with "gotcha" video, the kind that actually sheds little light on the issue of racism and its institutionalization, and in the end is a shallow distraction that does more to dilute a serious discussion of the underlying issues. It's certainly not the kind of talk that would attract the attention of organizations such as the SPLC or the ADL, which are dedicated to combating hate speech and racial extremism in its many manifestations, and are logically and necessarily focused on dealing with hatemongers who spew hate over the public airwaves to large audiences every day. This is small-time, petty racism that is meaningless unless it can somehow demonstrate that Hargrove is a practicing racist today (not likely) or that it reveals a character flaw that he has never outgrown.
Part of the story that Hargrove has to tell, in fact, is all about his personal growth and the immense changes in attitudes that he has undergone. At one time, Hargrove was the consummate Company Guy, happily shilling the SeaWorld official line about the killer whales in their care and dedicating his body and his physical well-being to a company that saw him and the whales as commodities, for years at low salaries made endurable by their idealism and the ego satisfaction that came with the job. He made fun of the dippy hippies who used to protest outside SeaWorld venues for the freedom of the animals in his care, including one of the oldest wild whales in captivity, the Northern Resident (A5 pod) Corky. And then, like someone awakening from an abusive cult because the personal toll -- including the death toll of friends and colleagues -- began to mount, Hargrove grew up and out of the corporate cocoon he had placed himself in. To say that the Hargrove you see onstage today is nothing like the punk in the video is an understatement. In fact, it's also clear that this Hargrove -- the cocky, thoughtless racist -- is the Hargrove who also defended orca captivity to the hilt.
In the end, it reflects far more directly in a negative way on SeaWorld's culture, because the Hargrove in the video is the Ultimate SeaWorld Guy. And that same culture seems to think that smearing him with the video -- given that it has zero bearing on his knowledge of the company's orca-captivity programs -- will convince people that Hargrove has a credibilty problem. No, it's the company that would trot out that kind of petty, crude, ham-handed smear that has a credibility problem (and note that they don't even have enough class or smarts to do it on the sly, letting their defenders in the wingnutosphere do the dirty work for them; no, their comms chief is the guy out there on the front line, openly circulating the smear). Especially because it reminds us all so closely of how Scientology, the ultimate fear-driven cult, has operated for years.
What Wright's book details exhaustively is how the church assiduously gathers information, especially lots of private information, on all of its members and recruits, especially through the ritual "audits" conducted by the church that are essentially tell-all confession sessions, and then exploits that information and their insecurities to drive them deeper into the cult, making it so that the threat of cutting them off from the cult is like cutting off their air. Tellingly, Hargrove's book describes a culture among SeaWorld employees that worked in similar ways.
And woe betide anyone who should fall from favor in the cult of Scientology. They would be subjected to all kinds of ritual humiliations, demotions and even abusive degradation. Again, not entirely dissimilar from SeaWorld.
Eventually, some would try to break away, but if they ever tried to reveal to the public the facts they had learned they would be confronted with the most ferocious personal attacks, in which literally nothing was out of bounds. Of course, they would first mine all the personal information revealed during the church's "audits," which then were used in attempts to blackmail their critics into silence. If that failed, the church often resorted to even more frightening personal attacks. In the end, the phrase "going clear" is now a stand-in for anyone overwhelmed by Scientology's fraudulent spiritual nonsense, someone who believes in the church's overtly insane theology without question as an act of pure gullibility. The church itself is shrinking, but it's intensifying its hold on the believers it has remaining.
SeaWorld isn't as deeply deformed as Scientology, perhaps because its pseudo-religious components are limited, as is its reach. But it's become abundantly self-evident that SeaWorld's self-contained and rapidly collapsing bubble of badly constructed reality is approaching its final throes as well. And lashing out as it does so.
It's an ugly sight, really. Much uglier than a stupid video.
The Church of Jesus Christ-Christian, aka the Aryan Nations, at Hayden Lake, Idaho, in 2000.
The furor over recent "religious freedom" bills being passed in various states -- particularly Indiana, with similar viruses festering in North Carolina, Arkansas, and Texas -- has caught the attention, I'm sure, of a certain class of religious believers.
Namely, the people whose own religious faith, such as it is, dictates a belief in the supremacy of the white race and the diminution and demonization of all non-white races. They are real, they do exist, and they go by such names as the Christian Identity movement or its Church of Jesus Christ-Christian, or the Creativity Movement, aka the World Church of the Creator (WCOTC).
Each of these and a dozen other similar "faiths," while all considered "fringe" faiths, nonetheless lay claim each to being legitimate religions, and while their numbers have been steadily shrinking over the years, they do nonetheless claim a certain number of followers.
And they have been told, consistently, over many years by every authority in the United States, that while they may be perfectly free to hold and preach these beliefs, they do not have the right to act upon if they are involved in the business of providing public goods and services. They are not permitted to discriminate according to race or religion even if it is counter to their private religious beliefs, because the law does not permit such discrimination in the public square. Period.
So when they hear mainstream conservative Republicans proclaim "religious freedom" as an excuse to permit people to discriminate against the LGBT community, you can bet that they are paying close attention. Because the language of these bills is vague enough to apply not to only to the religious beliefs of the anti-LGBT activists behind these bills (and trust me, these crypto-fascist faiths are every bit as virulently homophobic) but also their own beliefs.
After all, if discrimination by religious belief is permissible under Indiana law -- or to be precise, if someone's (including businesses' and corporations') “exercise of religion has been substantially burdened, or is likely to
be substantially burdened” by anti-discrimination laws, then they can use the law as “a claim or defense… regardless of whether the state or any other governmental entity is a party to the proceeding” -- then it stands to reason that this would include religious beliefs that discriminate against blacks, Jews, and all other nonwhites.
That's where it's helpful to know what these beliefs look like. These are belief systems that still exist in places like Indiana and Illinois and Montana and California, dotted in small pockets all around the country. And the new spate of "religious freedom" legislation is like a dream come true for them. The essential argument is the same one they have been making for years -- that the law shouldn't require them to serve or do business with people their religious beliefs forbid them from engaging with.
Let's take, for example, the World Church of the Creator, aka the Creativity Movement. It was founded by the man who invented the wall-mounted electric can opener: Ben Klassen, a Florida real-estate salesman and a German immigrant.
Most of us know about the WCOTC's exploits after Klassen voluntarily joined the Great White Father in the sky in 1993 via an overdose of sleeping pills. At that point, there was a brief struggle for control of the church, which eventually wound up in the hands of the current Pontifex Maximus, Matthew Hale.
Hale's main bases of operations were Illinois and Montana, both of which had relatively small cores of followers who were extremely active in spreading the word of their faith, which is explicitly hostile to both Christianity and Judaism, instead laying claim to an independent belief in white people as the ultimate divine creation of God.
One of the better-known disciples who acted on his religious beliefs in a very public way was Benjamin Smith, a close associate of Hale's who went on a three-day murder spree targeting various minorities, including a former college basketball coach, a number of Orthodox Jews, and a Korean economics student. He shot himself when cornered by police.
WCOTC is a particularly vile religion, embodied by the various "Gospels" left behind by Klassen, who enjoyed a couple of terms in the Florida Legislature. His foundational text, Nature's Eternal Religion, is one of the most nakedly vicious and hate-filled pieces of eliminationist trash ever written. It doesn't help that Klassen's writing style, beyond the shock value of its viciousness, is actually quite anodyne and dull-witted.
Here's an excerpt from his No. 2 text, The White Man's Bible. This excerpt comes from "Creative Credo No. 29: Who Needs Niggers? Or, Elimination of the Black Plague:"
The present-day scourge in the form of the Black Plague in the midst of the White Race has no such beneficial compensations. Today's Black Plague is spelled niggers. It is more menacing, more deadly and persistent than the Black Death of the middle ages ever was. Today the niggers in America (also England and elsewhere) are multiplying at an explosive and unprecedented rate. In America the heart of most of the formerly great cities, built by thee genius of the White Man, are being taken over by niggers. ... Our once proud capital, Washington D.C., has deteriorated to the point where it is nearly totally black. It has turned into a dangerous, crime infested black jungle, in which the black animals prowl and prey. Crime is rampant and unchecked, and the once White inhabitants who built the city have long since fled to the outlying suburbs. Even the Congressmen who must commute to the center of the government must do so at dire risk to life and limb.
... Niggers Are Niggers. We use the term "nigger" deliberately in this book and recommend its usage in general conversation and writings by members of our church. As we have stated in a previous chapter, the second dumbest creature on the face of the earth is one who can't or won't recognize its enemies and the dumbest of all is that creature which will actively collaborate with its enemies for the destruction of its own race.
Deadly Enemies. We, of the Church of the Creator, recognize niggers as the foremost amongst our deadly enemies, with the Jews taking top priority. We regard all the colored races as a grave menace to our further existence on this planet whether they be black, yellow, or brown. In summation we will use the term "mud races" in contrast to the White Race throughout this book. ... Nature has made them eternally our mortal enemies, whether we now realize it or not. It is the task of the Church of the Creator to make the White Race acutely aware of this fact, and arouse it to action.
Bottom of the Ladder. Among all these races, the black niggers of Africa are undoubtedly at the lowest scale of the ladder dubiously called the human race. We of the Church of the Creator disclaim any common racial denominator with the niggers, the same as we do regarding monkeys. We regard them as either sub-human or humanoid, and recognize them as being closer to the animal kingdom than any species of humanity as exemplified by the White Race. We firmly vow to deliberately excrete them from the body of the White Racial Community and to forever prevent any penetration and admixture with our racial body. Any society that fails to excrete its wastes soon dies. To us, niggers are black poison, and we regard the Jewish goal of pumping the black blood of Africa into the veins of White America as the most dastardly crime ever committed in all of history.
This is the Pandora's Box the blinkered, hate-driven advocates of "religious freedom" bills -- which in the end should be more accurately labeled "bigotry legalization bills" -- have opened. Lots of luck putting it back in.
While most militia organizers in the United States focus their
energies on combating what they see as domestic enemies — particularly
the federal government and other alleged participants in a nefarious
“New World Order” scheme to enslave Americans — in recent weeks there
have been a handful of so-called “Patriots” who have decided it’s more
worthwhile to focus their attention overseas. They say they are
organizing to fight Islamic State (ISIS) radicals in the Middle East.
The men behind of these efforts — one based in Arkansas, one in
Florida — claim to be forming armed squads of militiamen to fly into
ISIS hotspots in Iraq and Syria and combat the enemy on the ground.
Neither, however, appear to be anything more than a fundraising
operation built around pure fantasies.
Their grandiose claims verge on the utterly ridiculous. One promoter,
a man who will only identify himself by the alias Swandog, says he’s
building a multi-billion dollar operation, will soon have a force of
7,000 specialized military and intelligence operators, and will pay each
of them more than $100,000. There is not a shred of known evidence to
suggest there’s anything real behind the swaggering talk.
Swandog, a “commander” so brave he refuses to identify himself by name, described for a credulous local Arkansas TV news report
his plans for assembling a multi-billion-dollar effort to combat ISIS
with volunteers to his “private militia.” With a straight face, the TV
station asserted that Swandog “reportedly already has men on the ground
in the Middle East” and has raised “tens of millions of dollars.” It
even presented a local “expert” who said the effort “seems to be
genuine” and could work. In the report, the designated expert, a local
criminology professor and former Green Beret, offers no evidence at all
for his belief.
“Team Swandog currently numbers just under 500. We are recruiting
actively,” Swandog told KTHV-TV reporters from nearby Little Rock.
“Right now we do have six advance teams in the theater of operation;
they’re in non-combat roles just doing prep work for our arrival.”
He told the reporter that he is recruiting former Special Operations
and intelligence personnel, as well as snipers, medics and support
staff. He also claimed that he was offering them a base annual salary of
$120,000.
Swandog, aka David Paul Brennan of Searcy, Ark.
Swandog makes some big claims about money: “Most of our funding comes
from businesses and churches, we don’t do very much individual
fundraising at all. Depending on how fast we want to do this operation,
we can do it in the course of two years on about $10 billion, now that’s
going to be a fraction of the cost of a full-fledged military
operation.”
Without a hint of irony, he also claimed that the team was being
selective about just who could sign up. “The challenge is: we deal with a
lot of posers, we deal with a lot of people who claim to be a former
Navy SEAL or former CIA and we can weed them out just through the
interview process,” he said.
Swandog could be describing himself. After a little sleuthing,
Hatewatch learned that Swandog’s real name is David Paul Brennan, and he
is a Searcy, Ark., man who has at various times in his career has described himself as a “professional badass”
and boasted about his supposedly high intelligence-test scores, but who
has in fact never served in the military, and has never worked for any
intelligence-gathering service.
Brennan acknowledged all this in an interview with Hatewatch. “I do
not have a military background,” he said. “About all I’m willing to put
out there is having ties to the intelligence community.”
He claimed that he actually represents a team of more than two dozen
people who have worked together to formulate a citizens’ strategy for
defeating ISIS overseas. “We kind of all met a few years back. We didn’t
even know each other until a few years ago; we met at a tattoo shop —
the core group — and then kind of added to our little group since then.
And when we noticed what was going on with the Islamic State, and we
started to research it and realize that everything America does plays
into exactly what it is that radicalizes these people and makes more of
them, we felt like we needed to try to do something about it.”
Brennan claimed that the group has so far assembled more than $40
million in support from his network, and has already deployed some of
its team into the “theater of operations” in the Middle East.
“We are putting together an actual combatant force, which is going to
be 3,000 strong, and we’ll have 2,000 in reserve here plus a support
element, for a total of 7,000 paid positions for us. And when you get an
operation that large, it does take a lot of funding.
“We have raised a considerable amount of money that is funding our
advance teams that are in the theater now. And they’re pretty well
getting the lay of the land for us. … It’s a pretty robust
human-intelligence operation. And that is ongoing. That has funding
through the end of April.”
Brennan said these advance-team members are all American citizens.
“Most of them come from either the intelligence community, whether it’s
defense intelligence agencies, Central Intelligence Agency, or one of
the other agencies, or they come from a private security background,” he
told Hatewatch.Brennan has created a “Team Swandog” website that lays out their strategy. In a video posted to the site, he described the grand strategy in greater detail.
“We are rising up to destroy the Islamic State and eradicate radical
fundamentalist Islam from the face of the planet and we have a strategy
to do it with a relative handful of guys compared to a full-scale
military invasion. We’re going to do it with a strategy of
unconventional warfare, guerrilla tactics,” he boasts.
“Now how do we destroy the Islamic State? We do it by using guerrilla
tactics—by unconventional warfare. That’s how we do it. We go in with
very inferior numbers as to what is on the ground there to the number of
Islamic State fighters there are. But we use superior tactics and
superior training. Now our strategy will result in the destruction of
the Islamic State by three avenues. One, by tactical victories on the
ground; two, by eroding the morale of the Islamic State; and three, by
undermining the legitimacy of the Islamic State.”
Calling the fight against ISIS a “religious war,” he continued: “I’m
asking you to help Team Swandog on behalf of the United States of
America, on behalf of a people who have lost faith in their government
to protect them. I’m asking you to help us destroy the Islamic State
now. Sooner rather than later, and eradicate this evil ideology of
radical fundamentalist Islam from the face of the earth.”
He made a plea for volunteers, too: “Even if you’re just a good old
boy who happens to be really good with a high-power rifle, I need you. I
can put you to work as a sniper, killing these Islamic State
douchebags.”
Brennan, who harshly criticizes the Obama administration on his Twitter feed,
says this strategy is the only way to defeat ISIS. “This is how it’s
going to get done,” he claims in the video. “This is how the Islamic
State is going to be destroyed and the evil ideology of radical
fundamentalist Islam is going to be eradicated from the planet. It’s
going to take all of us. It’s going to take every patriot getting
involved and doing what they can do.”
Brennan
explains that he calls his group a “militia” in order to avoid being
designated as mercenaries, who he says have no protections under the
Geneva Conventions. “We’re not a militia like the militia groups you
guys have experience with. We’re not antigovernment,” he says. “I’m not a
conspiracy theorist. I’m just a guy that has been around the block and
has a lot of connections. We just couldn’t see doing nothing about the
Islamic State.”
The second effort to organize a team of American veterans to fight
ISIS overseas originates with a Jacksonville, Fla., man named Sean Rowe.
His organization, called Veterans Against ISIS, was featured in similar
news stories from WTLV-TV and WPXI-TV, in which Rowe described his strategy to form a team of veterans to combat the spread of Islamic radicalism.
“We’re tired of seeing what’s going on, and it doesn’t look like
anything is being done,” he said. “These guys are slaughtering and
beheading people. We’re going over there to stop that; it’s not about
the money.”
Unlike Brennan, Rowe is an actual Army veteran of eight years. He started up a website and a Facebook page for his group, asking veterans with combat experience to step up and join his group.
Yet another group that ostensibly seeks to defend America from ISIS attacks also calls itself Veterans Against ISIS;
it had organized before Rowe, and is now considering legal action to
trademark the name. “We are here in case of a domestic threat; we’re not
a recruiting agency sending able bodies to Iraq,” said the group’s
co-founder Andrew Brian, another Army vet.
Rowe said he sees no issue in using the same name: “We’re all Veterans Against ISIS, so it shouldn’t be a problem,” he told the Army Times.
Rowe also tried putting together a GoFundMe site to raise money for his team. However, GoFundMe recently took down the page after it collected only $265 from various donors.
Since then, Rowe has apparently retreated in his strategy. A recent Facebook post
explained that he was downshifting his grand plans: “The role of this
organization has shifted to focus primarily on the uniting and
coordination of veterans for a defensive deployment in support of the
Christians in Syria against ISIS, and, secondarily, on the raising of
funds for necessities. Therefore, at this time we must decline any
interest from veterans wishing to deploy, unless they are able to fund
their own travel over there.”
On the team website, he now lists eight would-be participants by their aliases.
In contrast, Brennan claims to be having real success recruiting
participants. “Right now, we’ve got an even 90 people signed up for
this,” he told Hatewatch. “It’s not a huge number, by any stretch of the
imagination. But these are people who have military experience, a lot
of them are special operations, and they talk to me and they understand
that this is not a situation where everything is just decided by me and
that’s it. That everybody really has input, we’ve got an open-door
policy.”
Brennan said he understands that people will be skeptical: “If people
say it’s just a guy from Arkansas doing this, well, it’s not just a guy
from Arkansas,” he said. “In fact, if I was gone tomorrow, this would
still go on without me. Certainly, it doesn’t really depend on me.
“You know, nothing ever happened without people starting something.
Nothing great ever started out great. Everything great starts out small.
And that’s where we’re are, in that fairly small stage.”
Shaken by a year-long spike in LGBT-bashing crimes in their
predominantly gay neighborhood, community leaders from Seattle’s Capitol
Hill area organized a public forum this week that drew several hundred
participants, as well as the city’s mayor.
“I used to live on Capitol Hill, but I don’t anymore,” said Debbie
Carlsen of LGBTQ Allyship, a local rights organization, to the crowd on
Tuesday, echoing a number of other speakers. “And when I go to the Hill,
I don’t feel culturally safe. It’s not a place that I feel safe
anymore.”
A number of residents described to the crowd the kinds of assaults
that they have endured in the past year, including verbal harassment
escalating to physical assaults as they walked through the neighborhood,
as well as one alleged assault by a police officer. One man stood up
and removed his hat, revealing a large healing wound on his forehead,
saying he had been attacked only a week before and had been unable to
identify his assailants, “but they were all calling me names.”
Most of those who testified agreed that the worst, most violent attacks seemed to be directed at transsexual people of color.
The meeting, organized by Seattle city council member Kshama Sawant,
featured a number of speakers offering a range of solutions. Some
proposed more citizen patrols, while others opposed that step as
potentially dangerous. Some argued for greater police involvement, while
others blamed the police as part of the problem. Sawant spoke at length
about how economic disparities often fuel the conditions that make the
crimes possible.
Seattle’s openly gay Mayor Ed Murray, who attended the gathering with
his husband, said he will help take the lead on this issue. “I think if
people don’t feel safe, if they perceive they’re not safe, then we have
a problem,” he said. “And we as a city and we as a community have to
respond.”
Murray told KING 5 News
that he believes the problem is real and substantial. “I think there is
an increase,” he said. “I mean, we’ve been here before, we’ve seen this
right on this very street before, back in the late ’80s and early ‘90s,
when I was a young person. And we’re seeing it again.”
Shaun Knittel, the founder of Social Outreach Seattle, and one of the
people who helped douse the attempted arson at Neighbours Bar on New
Year’s Eve 2014, an act that eventually brought a heavy 10-year sentence
for the perpetrator, told the crowd that it needed to resolve some of
its internal differences if the community is going to form an effective
response to the challenge.
“We have a perfect storm here on the Hill,” said Knittel, noting the
split between people who support the police and those who blame the
police. “What kind of message does that send to people who want to do
harm to us?”
“We also have a nightlife culture here where everyone that’s opening a
business here seems to think they need to be either a bar or a
nightclub. How many do you need in one neighborhood?”
Knittel urged victims of bias crimes to resist the temptation to not
report the matter to police at all, noting that doing so just encourages
repeat offenses and escalation.
“We need to understand better about reporting, and we need to talk
about what that looks like,” he said. “If you fear going to the police
to report, we understand that. But please, reach out and find and
advocate and let people help you report what’s happened. Because I can
guarantee you that you’re not their first victim.”
Most of all, he noted, the community needs to make it clear that “bashing queers” is not a free sport for haters anymore.
“We need to lean into this notion that you can come up here and mess
with us and we won’t do anything back,” he said. “Those days are over.”
Here's a story a collected while reporting on the saga of the Montana Freemen in the 1990s. I have always thought it was a revealing (not to mention disturbing) instance of the far-right "Patriot" mindset, particularly in how they viewed the world and the way children should be raised.
This is an excerpt from Chapter 5 of my first book, In God's Country: The Patriot Movement and the Pacific Northwest, published by WSU Press in 1999. The chapter is primarily about the activities of the Freemen prior to their infamous armed standoff with the FBI of 1996, especially Ur-Freemen Rodney Skurdal and Leroy Schweitzer, in the little town of Roundup.
---
A sign on the Freemen property.
While their legal defeats were coming in rapid succession, the Freemen’s recruiting was going well. Another key follower showed up at the Freemen ranch that fall: Dale Jacobi. A Canadian businessman who had moved from Calgary in the 1980s south to Thompson Falls, Montana, Jacobi became involved in the radical right while operating a propane-gas business in the little Clark Fork River logging town just a few miles east of Noxon. He fell in with John and Dave Trochmann, and also became acquainted with another local Constitutionalist, John Brush.
Brush decided to move to Musselshell County in 1994, partly to be closer to the Freemen, so he bought a parcel of land out in the distant woods and set about raising and training horses with his wife and daughter. Jacobi, who became a Freemen follower after Trochmann recommended their four-day courses in the Militia of Montana newsletter that spring, sold his business and moved onto Brush’s land, living in a trailer on the property.
In one afternoon that fall, though, Brush not only disavowed Dale Jacobi but the Freemen as well. He later explained why to John Bohlman, the Musselshell County prosecutor:
One morning, Brush told Bohlman, when he drove into town for supplies, Jacobi took Brush’s 8-year-old daughter, with her dog in tow, out to a remote part of their land. He carried with him a stool and a piece of rope. Under a tree, Jacobi set up the stool and placed the little dog on it. Then he made a noose with the rope, placed it over the dog’s neck, and slung it over the tree. He pulled the open end of the rope tight and held it at a distance from the dog, then told the girl to come stand in front of him. Call the dog, he told the girl. She did. It jumped off the stool and hung itself as Jacobi held the line taut.
The girl was in hysterics when her father returned home. Enraged, he asked Jacobi why he did it. Jacobi told him he felt the girl needed some toughening up, and that this would help her. Brush screamed at Jacobi to leave and never come back. Jacobi packed his things into his car and left.
He found an open room at [Rodney] Skurdal’s ranch, and soon was named one of the group’s constables. Brush announced he wanted nothing more to do with that bunch -- and asked Bohlman to remove the arms cache Jacobi had left behind. Bohlman and a deputy went out to Brush’s place and found PVC pipes hidden under some brush, stuffed with a few guns and a massive load of ammunition, reloading tools, powder and bullets, enough to make thousands of rounds with. Brush also told Bohlman he knew of similar caches like this in strategic spots throughout the Northwest.
--
Of course, none of this ended particularly well for any of the participants, most of whom wound up doing federal prison time after engaging the FBI in a record-setting 81-day standoff at another ranch outside the town of Jordan, a couple of hours north of Roundup. One hopes that John Brush's daughter eventually recovered. And that her daddy got a clue.
It was a brave step, back in 2010, that the Southern Poverty Law Center took when it decided to designate a number of viciously anti-LGBT organizations who liked to pose as mainstream "pro-family" groups as "hate groups" -- most notably the Family Research Council and the American Family Association -- because they knew full well that there would be a backlash from conservatives and Beltway types who see these suit-and-tied operators as just ordinary-seeming folks, even if they are a little bigoted.
The designation was fully deserved, though, because as the SPLC then went on to demonstrate fully, these organizations indulge in hate-mongering that is not significantly different than the kind of vicious garbage that is regularly spread by outfits like the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations. The only difference is in that the target is based on sexual orientation and not race (and to be frank, the Klan and the AN target the LGBT community just as viciously too).
It's true that, unlike those latter groups, the suit-and-tied FRC and AFA and their anti-LGBT cohorts (all of them from the religious right) do not engage in systematic acts of violence against their targets. But then again, the SPLC monitors the Klan not just because of the violence that it actively commits, but also because of the violence that it engenders independent of its own activities through its hate speech.
Employing hate speech that encourages acts of discrimination and ultimately violence is the leading reason any organization winds up being designated by the SPLC as a "hate group." That's spelled out very clearly in their criteria:
All hate groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an
entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics. ... Hate
group activities can include criminal acts, marches, rallies, speeches,
meetings, leafleting or publishing. ... Listing here does not imply a group
advocates or engages in violence or other criminal activity.
And there's no other way to describe what the FRC and AFA do, on a regular basis, than engaging in anti-LGBT hate speech: claiming that pedophiles are more likely to be gay, or promoting quarantines of AIDS victims, or the criminalization of homosexuality. And that's really just a sampling of the fetid spew of bile that these outfits flood our discourse with on an ongoing basis.
So now, if there's anything these outfits hate as much as gays and lesbians these days, it's the SPLC and their hate designation. They constantly rail against the organization as "ultra liberal" (um, only if opposing bigotry is no longer the purview of conservatives, ya know what I'm sayin?) and essentially Satanic itself. My favorite recent example of this was when far-right pastor E.W. Jackson attacked the SPLC as being no different than slave-holding plantation owners. No really.
And the SPLC had to have known, back in 2010 when it made this choice, that these hate groups would claim that the only reason they had been given that designation was that they "favored traditional Christian values/marriage" -- rather than the truth, which was that they earned the title by viciously demonizing the LGBT community with false and dehumanizing smears. And yep, sure enough, that has been the entirety of their response.
Well, not the entirety. They have also seized upon the unfortunate and saddening attack on the FRC's Washington offices in August 2012 by a crazed man named Floyd Corkins who had read the SPLC's "hate map" and decided to retaliate violently against the people who had been stirring up hatred against gays. As we noted at the time, it was a betrayal of everything groups like the SPLC are about -- that is, defusing the kind of hate talk that encourages acts of violence and terrorism -- but that of course did not stop the FRC and AFA and all their conservative cohorts at places like Fox News from laying all the blame at the doorsteps of the SPLC. (The incident also was truly an outlier, one that has not been repeated to form any kind of trend.)
So now, whenever anyone brings up their hate-group designation, these outfits just yell "Floyd Corkins!!!" sort of the same way Tea Partiers yell "Benghazi!!!" whenever they want to slag President Obama.
And as if to emphasize just HOW much they hate the SPLC, and HOW much they hate hate hate hate their designation as a "hate group," the AFA recently decided to publish its own "hate map," a kind of cheesy ripoff of the SPLC's own long-recognized and respected hate-group map.
There are four categories of "anti-Christian bigotry groups", according to the AFA: "Homosexual Agenda" groups, "Atheists", "Anti-Christians," and "Humanists." (The SPLC, in case you're wondering, is designated "Anti-Christian." The site explains:
These
groups are deeply intolerant towards the Christian religion. Their
objectives are to silence Christians and to remove all public displays
of Christian heritage and faith in America.
A common practice of these groups is threatening our nation’s
schools, cities and states. By threat of lawsuit, they demand prayer
removed from schools and city council meetings, Ten Commandments
monuments stricken from courthouses and memorial crosses purged from
cemeteries and parks.
Because of anti-Christian bigotry, private business owners have been
sued and forced to close their business. Families and businesses that
express a Christian worldview on social issues often face vicious
retaliation from bigoted anti-Christian zealots.
Some members or supporters of these groups have committed violent
crimes against Christians and faith-based groups. Physical and profane
verbal assaults against Christians are methods frequently exercised in
their angry methods of intimidation.
At
first glance, the map appears to be pretty heavily populated, but a
quick search of the actual groups listed reveals that the AFA basically
just listed every atheist, humanist, or freethinker organization it
could find, as well as the state chapters of national organizations such
as Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Freedom
From Religion Foundation, SPLC, the Human Rights Campaign, and GLSEN ...
A closer examination reveals a stunning bit of hypocrisy as well. If you go to the AFA's map, you will find that you can actually locate the street addresses of the organizations listed -- including the SPLC and People for the American Way -- not just in the towns but can drill down to see where they are located and obtain their actual street addresses. Here's what happens, for example, if you take a close look at their entry for the SPLC:
You'll get a similar map if you look at every other organization listed. Each of these organizations -- many of which are just run out of people's homes -- can now be targeted by kooks who might want to harm them in the same manner as Floyd Corkins, but that's apparently OK with the AFA, as long as it only affects the people they perceive as their enemies.
Ironically, this is exactly what the AFA and the FRC accused the SPLC of having done in the Floyd Corkins case. The FRC's Tony Perkins, on the day after the attack, claimed the SPLC had given Corkins a "license to shoot" by identifying their D.C. offices on their hate map. And indeed, Perkins continues to claim to this day that "the source of Corkins' hit list was, in fact, the SPLC's "hate map," that listed FRC's address."
But if you look at the SPLC's map for D.C., and its listing for the FRC, this is all you will actually see:
If you try to zoom in closer, you can't. There are in fact no addresses listed.
Most likely, this is because the SPLC has always recognized that giving specific addresses for groups it is criticizing is a bad idea, for a large number of reasons. One of those is that it might in fact become the grounds for someone's act -- or it might even be construed as a deliberate attempt to target the organization.
Obviously, that's not what the SPLC wants, as it has made clear in the wake of the Corkins affair. It is identifying these groups as hate groups as a matter of accountability for the violence-engendering rhetoric and ideas that they peddle.
It's not so clear, however, that the AFA's intent is so innocent.
A judge this week granted Chris Simcox, the former nativist extremist
known sarcastically among those on the border as the “Little Prince”
because of his arrogant bearing, the right to represent himself in his
forthcoming trial in Phoenix for child molestation — charges that could
put him away for life.
Simcox’s trial was rescheduled on Monday for March 16 by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Jose Padilla, who stipulated several rules for Simcox’s plans to conduct a self-represented (pro se) defense on three counts of child molestation and two counts of sexual conduct with a minor.
Simcox's booking shot
All this means that Simcox likely will be personally cross-examining
his two young victims, who were ages 6 and 5 in 2013 at the time of
their alleged abuse. According to the papers filed by prosecutors,
Simcox “is alleged to have digitally penetrated his biological
daughter’s [vagina] on two occasions, penetrated her vagina with an
object on [one] occasion and to have fondled the genitals of his
daughter’s friend on two occasions.
Jerry Cobb, a spokesman for the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office,
told Hatewatch that victim advocates with backgrounds in dealing with
sexual abuse cases involving children had been assigned to the two young
girls.
But cases in which the victims of a sexual assault are required to
face their accused attackers on the witness stand are relatively rare.
Even rarer, according to legal experts consulted by Hatewatch,
are pro-se cases involving child sex assault victims. In fact, allowing
accused perpetrators of a sexual assault to directly cross-examine
their alleged victims remains a controversial component of American
jurisprudence. The practice recently came under intense scrutiny when a
rape victim in Seattle, distraught with the prospect of having to face
the man she said attacked her when she was a child, threatened suicide at the courthouse, after he won the right to represent himself.
“Judges can be very creative about this, but the fundamental
constitutional right of somebody to represent themselves in trial is
pretty strong,” said Patty Eakes, a former prosecutor now with the
Seattle firm Calfo Harrigan Leyh & Eakes. “So it’s always a tricky
position for a judge when someone decides they want to go pro se, and
when they go pro se, then technically he has the right to examine the
person.”
This often throws the courts into a balancing act between the rights
of the victims and the rights of the accused. In any event, Eakes
observed, Simcox was dooming his chances in court, as well as closing
off at least one avenue of appeal (inadequate representation), by asking
the court to represent himself.
“He may have delusions of grandeur about what a great job he’s going
to do, but he’s going to have two strikes against him with that jury
before he stands up, just because he chose to do this, right?” Eakes
said.
Simcox had initially been offered a plea bargain
that would have required him to serve 10 years in prison, but he
refused and insisted on taking the case to trial. According to a report
by Stephen Lemons of the Phoenix New Times, Simcox engaged in a tense back-and-forth with Judge Padilla during the hearing to determine if Simcox would represent himself.
“In a sense, I kind of welcome the trial,” Simcox said at the time. “I would relish the opportunity for the truth to come out.”
The developments are the latest in a long and twisted road to trail
for Simcox, who previously had suggested he would present a “grand
conspiracy” defense that he had been targeted for prosecution, and the
evidence against him invented, because of his prominent role as a leader
and co-founder of the nativist extremism group called the Minutemen.
At the height of the border movement, Simcox was president of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps,
a nationwide, anti-immigration vigilante organization with armed
“citizen border patrols” in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas,
along with a smattering of states on the Canadian border where Minutemen
had deployed to protect America from northern invaders. Never modest,
the cigar-chomping Simcox was a hyper and relentless self-aggrandizer
who came across with the smug egotism that quickly earned him the
nickname “The Little Prince.”
But even then, there were allegations of sexual abuse.
As the SPLC reported in 2005,
Simcox was accused by his first wife of molesting another daughter when
she was a teenager, though no complaint was ever made to police. His
second wife also sought custody of their teenage son because, she said,
Simcox had become violent and unpredictable. His third wife — the mother
of his current accuser — took out a restraining order against Simcox in 2010 when she divorced him.
When Hatewatch contacted Simcox then, he refused to answer four direct questions about the allegations.
“I would never answer those questions to you. You can’t ask those
questions,” he said. “You’re on a witch hunt and you’re trying to
discredit our movement, which is to secure the borders. … My personal
life has nothing to do with anything that goes on here.”
So the Oklahoma Legislature has voted overwhelmingly to ban an Advanced Placement course on American history because it contains too many of the "negative" aspects of history and is not overwhelmingly "positive." In its place, the lawmakers propose replacing the course with a farrago of blather, half-truths, and right-wing religious propaganda.
One could say, "Only in Oklahoma." But not. Already it's spread to Texas. And look for other state legislatures to take up the torch, so to speak.
But one can easily imagine WHY this began in Oklahoma. After all, there's more than a little "negative" history that the white right-wingers of the state have long ago swept under the carpet there, and they bygawd intend to keep it that way.
Here are some important moments in Oklahoma history that future students in the state will almost certainly not learn about, because they decidedly fall into the "negative" category.
The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921
Like so many of the "deadly ethnic riots" that erupted in America between 1890 and 1930, this one had its beginnings with a young black man offending virtuous white womanhood, bringing a mob of angry white men in vengeful pursuit. In this case, it was 19-year-old black shoeshiner named Dick Rowland who got onto an elevator at the building where he worked that was operated by a young white woman. Upon his arrival at the ninth floor, a nearby clerk heard her shriek and saw Rowland fleeing; upon arriving at the elevator, he found the young woman in a "distraught" state, and assumed she had been assaulted. (In fact, he likely had only stumbled upon leaving the elevator and the woman had shrieked out of concern for him.)
Nonetheless, authorities were summoned and briefly investigated the matter. Rowland was held in jail a few hours and questioned and then released.
But the Tulsa Tribune
was on the case. "Nab Negro for Attacking
Girl In an Elevator" shouted the front-page headline. Though no copies of this have survived, an editorial warning that Rowland might be lynched, headlined "To Lynch Negro Tonight", reportedly ran on the paper's interior pages.
Soon gangs of angry white men were seen roaming the area around Greenwood, the black commercial area known as the "Negro Wall Street" for its stunning financial success. Dick Rowland lived in a neighborhood there. And soon armed bands of black men had begun gathering too, determined not to permit another young black man to be lynched at the hands of whites for an imagined crime.
One of these groups of black men approached the white sheriff and offered their assistance in maintaining order. Not only did the sheriff refuse the offer, but a white man at the scene demanded one of the black men hand over his gun. When the man refused, shots were exchanged. Soon a full-scale riot erupted.
Rampaging whites brought guns and torches and began destroying everything and everyone in Greenwood. For the remainder of the day, groups of armed blacks and whites were squaring off and firing at each other. The next morning, a siren sounded at daybreak, which seemed to signal a fresh assault by whites on the black neighborhood. Soon they were setting fires and the black residents began fleeing in panic. Mob members entered people's homes and forced them to flee in the streets. A couple of biplanes flew overhead, dropping incendiary bombs on the black neighborhood and shooting at people below.
At the end of the violence, hundreds of people were dead, though the numbers remain in dispute. News reports at the time counted 173 dead, most of them black. The NAACP estimated that between 150 and 200 black people were killed. Some estimates run as high as 300.
The entire commercial section of Greenwood was destroyed, including 191
businesses, a junior high school, several churches and the only black hospital
in the district. Some 1,256 houses were burned to the ground.
The surviving black populace, about 6,000 in all, were arrested and herded into several detention centers. These included injured blacks, who were unable to seek medical help because the black hospital had been destroyed, and the local white hospitals would not admit them.
A subsequent grand jury blamed the riots on the negligence of the police chief, and he was fired. That was the extent of any white accountability for the riot.
The Osage Reign of Terror
Rita Smith, left, and her housekeeper,
Nellie Brookshire, both killed by an assassin
The Osage Indian tribe, whose reservation is located in the northeastern part of Oklahoma, are perhaps best known to Americans as the ragtag band of remainders who populated some of the pages of Laura Ingalls Wilder's 'Little Home on the Prairie' books. Wilder wrote disparagingly of the Osages, upon whose lands, in fact, the Ingalls family were actually squatters, and were eventually thrown off their first 'little home on the prairie' for doing so.
What most Americans don't know is that by the 1920s, the Osage Indians were fabulously wealthy, the beneficiaries of having oil under the lands that had been designated their official reservation. The oil was discovered in 1894, and by 1920 it had become a major source of income for the tribal members who retained the mineral rights to the parcels of land each had been given in their original treaties. Some tribal members built mansions, bought fancy cars, hired servants, and sent their children to Harvard.
But by the mid-1920s this great gusher of wealth attracted the usual vultures who come to feast on the greed that permeates when large sums of money are involved. These included a large number of white men who realized that a number of these oil "headrights," as they were called, belonged to women, and would pass to their descendants upon their deaths.
William K. Hale
So these white men would move to Osage County, marry these Osage women (sometimes by plying them with liquor) and then, when the time was right, simply disposed of them. At least, that was the most common scam run by white men circling around these oil rights, but some of them -- notably a character named William King Hale, who called himself "King of the Osage" because he had managed to collect so many of these headrights -- came up with a variety of schemes to obtain them, including murder.
Eventually this faction had complete control of Osage County, including law enforcement, leaving the majority of the tribal population in abject terror that they too might be targeted for death because some white man lusted after his headrights and could get away with killing him. By the time that federal authorities finally moved in and got control of the situation, it's estimated that over 60 Osage tribal members had perished.
One of the most notorious of these involved Hale's assassination of his most vocal critic, a local man named Bill Smith who had been a close friend of a previous Hale victim, and whose wife owned a headright that Hale was scheming after. Hale sent a man to bomb the Smiths' home as they slept, which he did.
These crimes, in fact, constituted the newly-formed Federal Bureau of Investigation with its first big case, and the FBI maintains a fascinating archive of documents related to that investigation.
What Learning About These Incidents Means
An understanding of Oklahoma history would not be complete without at least some knowledge of these incidents, particularly because they loom so large in the history of race relations in America as a nation.
It also would give young people a clearer and fuller picture of the scope and nature of how history has shaped modern race relations in America. At a bare minimum, it will prevent privileged and sheltered whites from asking ignorantly: "Why haven't blacks done any better since we ended slavery?" or asking: "Why do Native Americans insist on clinging to their reservations?"
This and similar kinds of examinations of the darker chapters of American history actually do a great deal to shed light on our current dilemmas, particularly when it comes to issues of race, ethnicity, and religion, and particularly by white folks. By understanding our own culpability in creating current conditions, and confronting them honestly -- which includes embracing the moral responsibility that comes from being the long-term beneficiaries of this history -- there's at least a glimmer of hope of finding real solutions and creating a future that works for all our children.
Or ... we can just embrace the ignorance and doom ourselves to repeat history.
And believe me, there are a lot of ugly chapters in it.
