White Power USA: Video Report By Al Jazeera

[82_28]

In both articles, through his glaring omissions and de-contextualized narrative, he is clearly implying that the true source of danger to both Muslims and African-Americans, as well as other minorities, and the appropriate target of intensified government repression are to be found at the grass roots, especially among white Americans who feel marginalized and are 'falling through the cracks'. Presumably, according to this author, the Muslims and African-Americans and other targeted minorities will then breathe a sigh of relief.

Ah, the doublebind! Good catch.

[American Dream]

..

Alice, I don't personally think that the Nazis in and of themselves, represent anything near the greatest threat these days.

I do think their move to co-opt less marginal causes, most especially anti-Zionist organizing and conspiracy investigations - is something which we should be very, very concerned about. They bring with them a strong tendency to weaken our movements for social justice and to misdirect our thinking. Nowhere does this seem more important than in the case of Palestinian solidarity.

So you and I fundamentally differ on this.

[AlicetheKurious]

Alice, I don't personally think that the Nazis in and of themselves, represent anything near the greatest threat these days.

I do think their move to co-opt less marginal causes, most especially anti-Zionist organizing and conspiracy investigations - is something which we should be very, very concerned about. They bring with them a strong tendency to weaken our movements for social justice and to misdirect our thinking. Nowhere does this seem more important than in the case of Palestinian solidarity.

So you and I fundamentally differ on this.

Yes, that is your shtick, yet you have yet to offer any credible proof that "the Nazis" represent anything remotely like a serious threat to "weaken our movements for social justice", still less "misdirect our thinking". On the contrary, I think that a far greater danger to social justice movements is the insidious damage to morale and solidarity by organizations that purport to be "progressive" and "anti-racist", but whose modus operandi is to exaggerate the "nazi" threat, build up a reputation (and a huge financial budget) as fearless crusaders by suing and campaigning against extremely weak and marginalized fringe "nazi" or "white supremacist" groups, then use their "credentials" to sabotage and subvert Leftist movements on behalf of a zionist agenda.

It just so happens that your darling Southern Poverty Law Center, about whom Jeffrey Blankfort has said, "The Southern Poverty Law Center is another Zionist front group," is a perfect example of just such an organization.

As Alexander Cockburn wrote in an article about the SPLC named, "King of the Hate Business" published last year by The Nation:

The sun is dipping low in the evening sky over the Republican Party as the Other Leading Brand. A mere 21 percent of the adult population identify themselves as Republicans. Senator Arlen Specter sees the writing on the wall. He prefers to make his sixth senatorial run under the ample Democratic banner, rather than get mangled in the tiny shark tank of a Republican primary attended only by people who want to see the country run by Limbaugh and Hannity. With Al Franken certified, Specter crossing the aisle and Joe Biden in reserve, the Democrats can no longer hide behind the excuse of a Republican filibuster. They'll figure out a way, no doubt, but it could be embarrassing.

It's also horrible news for people who raise money and make money selling the notion that there's a right resurgence out there in the hinterland with legions of haters ready to march down Main Street draped in Klan robes, a copy of Mein Kampf tucked under one arm and a Bible under the other, available for sneak photographs from minions of Chip Berlet, a prime promoter of the Christian menace.

What is the archsalesman of hatemongering, Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, going to do now? Ever since 1971, US Postal Service mailbags have bulged with his fundraising letters, scaring dollars out of the pockets of trembling liberals aghast at his lurid depictions of a hate-sodden America in dire need of legal confrontation by the SPLC. Nine years ago Ken Silverstein wrote a devastating commentary on Dees and the SPLC in Harper's, dissecting a typical swatch of Dees's solicitations. At the time, Ken pointed out, the SPLC was "the wealthiest civil rights group in America," with $120 million in assets.

As of October 2008, the net assets of the SPLC were $170,240,129. The merchant of hate himself, Mr. Dees, was paid an annual $273,132 as chief trial counsel, and the SPLC’s president and CEO, Richard Cohen, $290,193. Total revenue in 2007 was $44,727,257 and program expenses $20,804,536. In other words, the Southern Poverty Law Center was raising twice as much as it was spending on its proclaimed mission. Fundraising and administrative expenses accounted for $9 million, leaving $14 million to be put in the center’s vast asset portfolio.

But where are the haters? That hardy old standby, the KKK, despite the SPLC’s predictable howls about an uptick in its chapters, is a moth-eaten and depleted troupe, at least 10 percent of them on the government payroll as informants for the FBI. As Noel Ignatiev once remarked in his book Race Traitor, there isn’t a public school in any county in the U.S.A. that doesn’t represent a menace to blacks a thousand times more potent than that offered by the KKK, just as there aren’t many such schools that probably haven’t been propositioned by Dees to buy one of the SPLC’s “tolerance” programs. What school is going to go on record rejecting Dees-sponsored tolerance?

Dees and his hate-seekers scour the landscape for hate like the arms manufacturers inventing new threats and for the same reason: It’s their staple.

The SPLC’s latest Year in Hate report claims that in 2008 the number of hate groups rose to 926, up 4 percent from 2007, and 54 percent since 2000. The SPLC doesn’t measure the number of members in the groups, meaning they probably missed me. Change that total to 927. I’m a hate group, meaning in Dees-speak, “one with beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people,” starting with Dick Cheney. I love to dream of him being waterboarded, subjected to loops of Schonberg played at top volume, locked up naked in a meat locker. But the nation’s haters are mostly like me, enjoying their (increasingly circumscribed) constitutionally guaranteed right to hate, solitary, disorganized, prone to sickening relapses into love, or at least the sort of amiable tolerance for All Mankind experienced when looking at photos of Carla Bruni and Princess Letizia of Spain kissing.

The effective haters are big, powerful easily identifiable entities. Why is Dees fingering militiamen in a potato field in Idaho when we have identifiable, well-organized groups that the SPLC could take on? To cite reports from the Urban League, and United for a Fair Economy, minorities are more than three times as likely to hold high-cost subprime loans, foisted on them by predatory lenders, meaning the big banks; “all black and Latino subprime borrowers could stand to lose between $164 billion and $213 billion for loans taken during the past eight years.” Get those bankers and big mortgage touts into court, chief counsel Dees! How about helping workers fired by people who hate anyone trying to organize a union? What about defending immigrants rounded up in ICE raids? How about attacking the roots of Southern poverty, and the system that sustains that poverty as expressed in the endless prisons and Death Rows across the South, disproportionately crammed with blacks and Hispanics?

You fight theatrically, the Dees way, or you fight substantively, like, for example, the Institute for Southern Studies run by Chris Kromm; or like Stephen Bright, who makes only $11,000 as president and senior counsel of the Southern Center for Human Rights. The center’s director makes less than $50,000. It has net assets of a bit over $4.5 million and allocates about $1.6 million a year for expenses, 77 percent of its annual revenue. Bright’s outfit is basically dedicated to two things: prison litigation and the death penalty. He fights the system, case by case. Not the phony targets mostly tilted at by Dees but the effective, bipartisan, functional system of oppression, far more deadly and determined than the SPLC’s tin-pot hate groups. Tear up your check to Dees and send it to Bright.

Link

The m.o. of pseudo-progressive groups like the Southern Policy Law Center is to build up their "anti-racist" credentials (and a huge budget, most of which goes to salaries and fund-raising activities) by wildly exaggerating the prevalence of white supremacist and nazi groups, and then turning around and using those credentials to undermine the movement for Palestinian rights with anti-semitism. Case in point:

Morris Dees is the head of the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Center made a name for itself in the 70s and 80s fighting for civil rights and human rights for blacks. They're very concerned with racism. They moved on to fighting the Ku Klux Klan, the white supremacist movement and the militia movement. Good liberals.

Morris Dees endorses the book whose cover is at left, called Antisemitism Today. On the back cover, he writes of the author, "Ken Stern has been out on the front lines of the fight against antisemitism, and he knows how and where the battles have been waged." Etc.

I just got the book today, but it was published in 2006 by the American Jewish Committee. You'll see the cover of the book features some angry Arabs at a demonstration, apparently Palestinians, if you notice the Palestinian flag. There's one sign against the occupation.

Wait, what the hell do these generic Arabs have to do with anti-Semitism today? Where is the antisemitism? Isn't it racist to put a photograph of Arabs on a book jacket and accuse them of anti-Semitism? Why is the Southern Poverty Law Center endorsing a racist book jacket? Do Arabs ever count when you're fighting racism?

Not really. There's an exception for Arabs. The exception is that great modern American tradition called PEP, reflecting the importance of American Jews to liberal causes: Progressive Except for Palestine.

The author of the book is Ken Stern. He works for the American Jewish Committee and he's Mr. PEP. His previous books were in support of the American Indian Movement and against the American militia movement.

American Indians: good. American right wingers: bad. Arabs: bad.

Got that? It's easy to be PEP!

Link

Interestingly, as far as I know, American Dream, you are the only poster who regularly posts articles based on self-serving and highly profitable agitprop from the Southern Poverty Law Center, to buttress your hysteria-mongering about the burgeoning threat posed by 'goose-stepping Nazis'. It's worth repeating what Cockburn wrote in the essay I quoted above:

But where are the haters? That hardy old standby, the KKK, despite the SPLC’s predictable howls about an uptick in its chapters, is a moth-eaten and depleted troupe, at least 10 percent of them on the government payroll as informants for the FBI.

That same SPLC has shown an odd propensity to use the same tactics used by such organizations as the ADL and other zionist organizations, to attack pro-Palestinian activists as 'anti-semites' and to conflate between zionism and Judaism, all from their supposedly lofty moral perch. A perch from which, oddly enough, tiny groups of marginalized nazis warrant far more scrutiny and publicity than the much better organized and well-funded zionist groups that promote genocidal hatred of Muslims and Arabs through organizations like Aish HaTorah and the Clarion Fund, who produced and distributed millions of free copies of the racist anti-Muslim dvd "Obsession" during the last U.S. presidential campaigns at an estimated cost of more than US$ 50 million, just to cite one example. Or the Muslim-bashing Daniel Pipes' Campus Watch organization, which essentially exists to harass university professors and students who deviate from the hateful zionist script.

In my opinion, replacing "nazis" with "pseudo-progressive organizations like the SPLC and other zionist fronts" makes your statement much more accurate:

They bring with them a strong tendency to weaken our movements for social justice and to misdirect our thinking. Nowhere does this seem more important than in the case of Palestinian solidarity.

[American Dream]

Alice, your tendency to grossly misrepresent my position and then argue endlessly with that straw man is getting very, very old.

As I think you know, I don't "believe" in the SPLC. Neither do I "believe' in the ADL. In fact I have significant criticisms of both.

However, I think we all know that just because ADL does bad things, it doesn't mean that some of the people they speak about aren't vile racists. Of course they are.

You really don't get it?

Inviting right wing racists such as Nazis who want in to Palestinian solidarity work is bad for all of us, most especially for the Palestinians.

How could you think otherwise?

[Sounder]

Alice did not say that you 'believed' in the ADL, but your sthick sure sounds a lot like the ADL sthick.

That is you both talk about a boogie man that weak as being strong and you try to bury the basic con of pushing peoples existing pretences for profit and to add to divisiveness.

[American Dream]

American Dream wrote:

Alice, I don't personally think that the Nazis in and of themselves, represent anything near the greatest threat these days.

[American Dream]

Here's one more related to Nazi-type groups organizing in the U.S. I've changed some names, for obvious reasons. I'll also reiterate for the gazillionth time, that of course ADL & DHS both suck but that doesn't make these Nazis and Klansmen good guys either...


http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/ ... print.html

Glenn Beck's white nationalist fans

After an ADL report says Beck may foment violence, I visit racist Web sites to see if their denizens are listening

By Alexander Zaitchik

Nov. 20, 2009 |

It's been a busy week for Glenn Beck watchers. On Monday, the Anti-Defamation League released a report warning of the paranoia and stridency that increasingly define the conservative grass roots. It echoed an April report issued by the Department of Homeland Security, but unlike the DHS report, the ADL named names, and fingered Beck as the figure most responsible for the unhinging of the right.

"Beck has acted as a 'fearmonger-in-chief,' raising anxiety about and distrust towards the government [which] if it continues to grow in intensity and scope, may result in an increase in anti-government extremists and the potential for a rise of violent anti-government acts," the ADL wrote.

Amazingly, just after the ADL report's release, Sarah Palin responded to a question about a possible Palin-Beck ticket by refusing to rule out Beck as a running mate. She praised him effusively, describing him as "bold, clever, and very, very, very effective."

Effective at what, exactly?

Earlier this week, Sam Stein of the Huffington Post detailed several instances in which Beck has welcomed onto his shows guests with ties to groups that traffic in white supremacy, neo-Confederate secession, and anti-Semitism. Stein's reporting was a good start, but it would take a chalkboard the size of Idaho to fully map out Beck's racially paranoid guest list.

But Beck insists his critics are imagining things, that he does not engage in racial fear-mongering, that a string of guests with ties to hate groups do not form a meaningful pattern, and that he's not a racist. It occurred to me the other day that if you really want to know whether Beck and his guests are blowing racial dog-whistles, it's best to ask a dog.

I decided to reach out to Don Black, the avowed white nationalist who runs the Web site Stxrmfrxnt.org, the country's leading "Discussion board for pro-White activists and anyone else interested in White survival." But Black hung up on me. I next tried to get in touch with David Duke, the former gubernatorial candidate and current head of the European American Unity and Rights Organization. Duke, too, had little interest in talking to me, likely because of my past association with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks the activities of white supremacist groups.

Unable to get through to the highest-profile spokesmen of the racist grass roots, I took a page from the other side and trawled their Web sites for insight. I scanned Dxviddxke.com and Stxrmfrxnt.org to see what they had to say, if anything, about Beck. Admittedly, this method is not scientific, and certainly folks on the left don't like it when righties cherry-pick an extreme comment from Daily Kos or the Huffington Post and pretend the whole site can be summed up by such extremism.

On the other hand, Stxrmfrxnt.org isn't a media organization but a self-described discussion board. And when it comes to Beck, the discussions are fairly positive. On both David Duke's Web site and Stxrmfrxnt, Beck's July 28 claim that President Obama harbors a "deep-seated hatred of white people, or the white culture" was met with attention and appreciation.

Duke was heartened by the discussion it generated, and placed it in a larger context. "A lot of stuff is happening in the world of race relations and little of it points towards a post-racial society," Duke noted. "Beck is steadily losing advertisers, but his viewers seem to be sticking with him ... White desperation is manifesting itself in various forms."

Beck's charge that the president hates white people sparked a more expansive discussion at Stxrmfrrnt.org. Some participants saw Beck as an important ally in the White Nationalist cause. Others were skeptical, viewing him as a clueless conservative version of Lenin's "useful idiot." But some of Stxrmfrxnt's most active members generally agreed that, whether he was fully conscious or not, Beck was nudging his audience toward an embrace of racial consciousness.

"Glen [sic] Beck can be useful," said one frequent Stxrmfrxnt contributor who posts under the name SS_marching. "When Glen beck said 'Obama Has A Deep-Seated Hatred For White People' he is able to reach a much wider audience than we can. They will [be] predisposed to the idea and the next time Obama pushes an anti-white policy they will see it as such."

Stxrmfrxnt member PowerCommander agreed. Beck, he wrote:

"seems to have ignited a flame under the asses of some folks with similar ideas by pushing the right buttons. It appears as if the current regime [is] directly blaming GB and fox news for throwing a wrench in their machine. Is Beck's rambling getting America fired up and ready to fight? Has Beck told enough of the truth to start something bigger? Even an engine needs a starter to get fired off and go down the road."

Thor357, a Stxrmfrxnt sustaining member who has posted on the site more than 3,500 times, had this to say:

"Glenn Beck and Alex Jones [a controversial conservative media figure who believes 9/11 was an inside job] are the front line in the war of Ideals we grapple with, they are far from perfect and are somewhat compromised. But every person in the last 2 years that I have introduced to the WN [White Nationalist] Philosophy have come largely from Alex Jones, Glen Beck and the Scriptures for America founder Pastor Pete Peters ... Baby steps are required for people like these, but the trio Beck, Jones, Peters are the baby food that feeds potential Nationalists… Glenn Beck is not far behind as his Mormon background indicates to me as most Mormons I have met are not friends of Jews like the Church was years ago. Most Mormons I know are arming themselves, with guns, bullets and food."

Later in the same discussion thread, Thor357 added:

"I have talked to 6 people in two days because Glenn Beck woke them up, it's amazing how angry they are. They are pissing fire over Obama, this is a good thing. Now I educate them. If out of 100 of the Glen Beckers I keep 20 then I have won 20 more to cover my back side. I never lost the 80 as they never were."

Carolina Patriot, whose member picture features a kitten aiming an assassin's rifle, was conflicted but admiring:

"Every now and again when an infomercial takes the place of hunting or fishing, I'll turn over to Glenn Beck if he's on and watch his show. Sometimes it is amusing, sometimes it is informed, and sometimes, I think he comes to SF [Stormfront] to steal show idea's"

UstashaNY offered up an analogy to substance abuse, with Beck as the soft-stuff hook:

"Beck, Dobbs etc. are like gateway drugs. If it wakes up one person to learn something about whats really going on and that person does the research, looks deeper and deeper into WHO and WHAT is behind all of this, then its a win for the movement. NOBODY in the msm is reporting the stuff Beck does, let him keep talking. It will wake people up, believe me… He is more of a help to us then you may think. Until we have a REAL voice in the msm, guys like him and Dobbs are a stepping stone right into our laps. Its only a matter of time..."

Even those who don't think Beck understands what he’s doing appreciate his instincts. According to WhiteManMarchesOn88:

"There is no doubt that Beck is not a WN [white nationalist], but I have to agree that he does raise a lot of really good questions that do promote White survival. I'm sure he would go a lot farther with a lot of his questions, but ZOG [Zionist Occupied Government] would more than likely kick him off television if he did."

ZOG or no ZOG, Beck is clearly doing something right from the point of view of the average white nationalist.

"By no means do I think [Beck] is aware of the racial issue, and for the moment that is ok," wrote Stxrmfrxnt member QHelios. "He is stirring the pot, and I thank him for that."

-- By Alexander Zaitchik

[AlicetheKurious]

Here's one more related to Nazi-type groups organizing in the U.S. I've changed some names, for obvious reasons. I'll also reiterate for the gazillionth time, that of course ADL & DHS both suck but that doesn't make these Nazis and Klansmen good guys either...

ADL, DHS and SPLC all suck because they are run by con-artists who outrageously pose as "anti-racists" and have been known to use lies, defamation and even agent provocateuring in order to rake in huge amounts of cash for their millionaire "administrators" AND to further the racist, zionist agenda. It's not good enough to cover your butt with statements like "I have criticisms" and "they suck", yet proceed to selectively post "anti-racist" articles that bolster the image of these specific groups by portraying them as moral authorities on the subject of racism, meanwhile totally ignoring much more serious and consistent anti-racist groups. (For example, INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence and ACORN, to name but two among many with much cleaner track records.)

I also found it jarring that, as a self-appointed "anti-racism" watchdog, who appears obsessed with sniffing out hidden "nazis" where there are not, you seemed oddly oblivious to the noxiously racist fumes that pervade the film "Precious" and in fact strongly defended it; in your exchange with Searcher, you seemed unconcerned about the proposed "hate" laws being pushed by the ADL. Such selectivity echoes the amazing hypocrisy of the ADL in bestowing an award to fascist admirer Silvio Berlusconi, strenuously opposing recognition of the Armenian genocide, remaining totally silent about anti-semitism by the Moonies' Unification Church and only very mildly critical of "christian" zionist leaders such as John Haggee (who blamed gays and lesbians for Katrina, and who spreads the libel that Muslims are required by the Quran to "kill Christians and Jews", as a representative example of his hate-mongering), all of which should be considered important clues as to their true agenda.

That's in addition to their spying and agent provocateur activities to inflate the figures and dangers of "racist extremist groups", and to manipulate them specifically to defame anti-zionist groups.

The SPLA, while listing the enormously influential (and wealthy) transnational Jewish Defence League as a terrorist group for its bombing campaigns and death threats, not only neglects to mention that its members have been convicted of murdering several people in the US alone, but reverses its usual habit of exaggeration by adding, "The JDL claims to have 13,000 members, but apparently has a few dozen at best."

February 25, 2002
The ADL Spying Case Is Over,
But The Struggle Continues

By Jeffrey Blankfort, Anne Poirier
and Steve Zeltzer
Plaintiffs in the of ADL Spying Case

In 1993, the District of Attorney of San Francisco released 700 pages of documents implicating the Anti-Defamation League, an organization that claims to be a defender of civil rights, in a vast spying operation directed against American citizens who were opposed to Israel's policies in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza and to the apartheid policies of the government of South Africa and passing on information to both governments.

Under great political pressure, Smith later dropped the charges. One wonders what would have happened had an Arab-American or Muslim organization been caught spying with the names of 10,000 people and 600 organizations in their files.

Not only were critics of Israel under ADL's surveillance,including thousands of Arab-Americans, but labor organizations such as the San Francisco Labor Council, ILWU Local 10, and the Oakland Educational Association, and civil rights groups such as the NAACP, Irish Northern Aid, International Indian Treaty Council and the Asian Law Caucus were also found in the "pinko" files of ADL's undercover operative, Roy Bullock.

Moreover, Bullock, who had worked, off the books, for the ADL for more than 25 years, admitted that he had been reporting on the activities of black South African exiles and American anti- apartheid activists for South African intelligence.

Bullock, pretending to be sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, came to the founding meeting of the Labor Committee of the Middle in 1987 at the home of plaintiff Steve Zeltzer, having met Zeltzer at meetings of the Free Moses Mayekiso Defense Committee, a South African labor solidarity committee in which he also infiltrated under false pretenses.

Having been responsible for exposing Bullock as an ADL agent to the media, we joined together with other Bay Area activists in filing a suit against the ADL for violation of our privacy rights as provided in California law.

Almost a decade later the suit has been settled with a significant cash payment by the ADL and, we wish to emphasize, without our signing any agreement for confidentiality which the ADL had previously demanded. Our efforts to expose the organization's work in defending the policies of the Israeli government and stifling its opponents will continue, using new information gained in the pursuance of the suit.

The ADL spent millions of dollars preventing this case from coming to trial through costly appeals and exploiting the judicial process but, at the end, it had to give up.

During the course of the suit we learned that:

Bullock, the ADL's top "fact finder" had sold confidential information to a South African intelligence agent in San Francisco for $15,000.

Ten days before he was assassinated in South Africa, Chris Hani, the man who would have succeeded Nelson Mandela as the country's president, was trailed by Bullock on a trip through California who reported on it to the South African government.

ADL agent Roy Bullock was discovered to have a floor plan of murdered Los Angeles Arab American leader Alex Odeh and a key to his office.

The ADL supplied confidential information to foreign governments that it obtained from police and federal agencies in the US,

Having infiltrated the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the ADL's "fact finder" performed a COINTEL-type operation at the convention of the Holocaust-denying Journal of Historical Review when he put ADC's literature on convention tables as a way of smearing the committee for "working with anti- Semites."

The ADL has organized to silence and eliminate all critical voices of Israel from academia and the media and has targeted professors , particularly those who are African American, and who are critical of Israel.

That at least 51% of the activities of its San Francisco office were devoted to defending Israel.

The ADL provided secret files to police agencies when these police agencies were prevented by law from collecting the files themselves.

Many questions must still be answered about the activities of the ADL and it's non-profit status as an "education organization". The settlement offered by the ADL is recognition on its part that it could not afford to go to a trial in front of a jury and face the likelihood that more of its dirty secrets would be revealed.

We call on all people to make sure that these practices on the part of the ADL are not allowed to continue and that the double standard that presently dominates this country on issues dealing with Israel be eliminated.

Finally, we wish to thank our attorney, former congressman Pete McCloskey, himself a victim of the ADL and the Israel Lobby, for his years of work on our behalf and his steadfast commitment to the pursuit of justice.

http://www.counterpunch.org/adlspying2.html

A case which has been compared to the Bullock case was that of James Mitchell Rosenberg, AKA Jim Anderson. Rosenberg/Anderson was an undercover operative of the ADL who acted as an agent provocateur, posing as a racist right-wing paramilitary extremist. He appeared in this role as part of a TV documentary entitled "Armies of the Right" which premiered in 1981. Rosenberg was arrested that same year in New York for carrying an unregistered firearm in public view. In 1984, ADL fact-finding director Irwin Suall identified Rosenberg as an ADL operative in a court deposition.

http://reference.findtarget.com/search/ ... %20League/

Actually, Rosenberg's activities went much farther than merely pretending to be a spokesman for white supremacists and making extremely racist and violent statements on teevee; he also planted white supremacist literature at Arab-American events and actively tried to recruit neo-nazis to attend pro-Palestinian events in full regalia, specifically to smear the Palestinian struggle by association. Interesting, eh?

...The contents of ADL's files directly contradict Foxman's claim that the organization targets only hate groups. Women in Black, the Northern California Ecumenical Council, and KQED-TV's board of directors are hardly hate-mongers. Nor are members of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. Yet, according to San Francisco chapter representative Maha Jaber (May Jaber's sister), "nearly the entire membership of ADC is listed in ADL computers." Attorney Marc Van der Hout of the National Lawyers' Guild, which is listed in ADL's files, said, "I am a Jew myself, and when I see the breadth of the organizations in these files that the ADL has conducted surveillance on, it is very clear to me that they have sort of lost touch with reality in terms of organizations that are engaged in real anti-Semitic activity."

In fact, ADL is less concerned with bigotry than with promoting its own rightwing agenda and silencing criticism of Israel. In a Village Voice article of May 11, Robert Friedman reported that ADL's director of fact-finding, Irwin Suall, regards the real danger to Jews as coming from ''a coalition of leftists, Blacks, and Arabs.'' In pursuit of these perceived enemies, ADL obviously does not stop at "fact-finding." ADL-investigator Bullock, for instance, not only joined ADC under a false name but tried to recruit neo-Nazis into the ADC in order to discredit the Arab-American organization. A more common tactic of the ADL is blacklisting Middle East scholars and other analysts who express criticism of Israel.

A Common ADL Tactic

At its annual meeting in 1984, the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) condemned ADL for distributing a 16-page list of teachers and researchers at major universities and describing them as "pro-Arab propagandists" who "use their anti-Zionism as a guise for their deeply felt anti-Semitism." A MESA resolution accused ADL of making "false, vague, or unsubstantiated assertions." In 1991, when Noam Chomsky was scheduled to speak in Berkeley, 17 UC Berkeley professors signed a letter accusing him of defending anti-Semites and his sponsor, the Middle East Children's Alliance, of being pro-PLO, pro-Saddam Hussain, and anti-Israel. The letter contained the kind of details—and gross distortions—that are the hallmark of ADL efforts to smear those it opposes. In his book They Dare to Speak Out, former Congressman Paul Findley quotes Chomsky as saying, "Virtually every talk I give is monitored, and reports of their alleged contents are sent on to the league to be incorporated in my file." He added that whenever he is scheduled to speak, ADL distributes literature in advance containing distorted or fabricated accounts of his views in an attempt to identify him as an anti-Semite.

But regardless of how ADL uses its files, even their very existence poses a threat to the nearly 10,000 individuals whose names are contained in them. As New York Times columnist Russell Baker pointed out in a recent column about the McCarthy era, the very act of "naming names" was harmful since the word "name" became a synonym for "possibly treasonous." Given ADL's insistence that it only targets extremists, it follows that anyone listed in its files becomes automatically suspect. Even worse, as Robert Friedman points out, since ADL files are not open to public scrutiny, false information cannot be challenged. In effect, he concludes, "the ADL has become the Jewish thought police. "

http://www.washington-report.org/backis ... 307020.htm

Bottom line: no, "Nazis and Klansmen" are very, very far from being "good guys". But ironically, those organizations that have made a career out of imposing a narrative that wildly exaggerates the prevalence of "anti-semitism", themselves represent a far greater and more immediate danger to the safety, security and freedom of vulnerable people, not only in the U.S., but world-wide.

[23]

The bad guys who clearly appear as bad guys aren't as potentially harmful to us as the bad guys who appear as good guys.

My radar tends to be more fixed on the latter.

They're a lot harder to spot and deserve more of our collective radar detection, IMO.

[American Dream]

..

Alice, I happen to agree with you that the ADL is bad news. I think you already know this.

I don't agree with you about forming common cause with neo-Nazis and other such haters. It could ever be good for Palestinian solidarity work in "the West", and I rather doubt it would help in Egypt, either.

Do you really think that sort of strategy makes any sense?

[§ê¢rꆧ]

Regarding the video in the OP

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24354.htm

"This video has been removed by user..."

I hate how YouTube will post that when a video is taken down, even if they have pressured the user to remove the video for copywrong reasons.

[American Dream]

..

Thanks for the heads up. §ê¢rꆧ.

I will update the original post.

The video is still available from Big Noise Films and also from Al Jazeera.

Here is a link:

White Power USA

[American Dream]

U of Oregon Gay & Lesbian Student Alliance Office Vandalized, Neo-Nazi-Style


The University of Oregon in Eugene is a pretty fantastic place to be gay; winning a consistent five-out-of-five stars on the Campus Pride Campus Climate Index and boasting a thriving queer student community and Queer Studies program.

But this crazy-ass unacceptable shit happens, y’all, even in Eugene: over the weekend vandals attacked the University’s LGBTQ office with black spray paint, leaving a four-foot square swastika emblazoned on the carpet and spray paint all over the office’s TV and computer monitor. According to The Oregonian, there was no sign of forced entry and the office had last been used by Alex Esparza, co-director of the alliance, who locked the door when he left at 2:45 pm last Friday. The vandalism was discovered by a janitor at 1 A.M. on Monday morning.

LGBTQ Alliance volunteer coordinator (and Autostraddle Intern Warrior Princess) Vashti got a call Monday morning from a co-director. “My reaction was just shock,” Vashti remembers. “I didn’t really know how to feel or process what had happened. It was difficult for me to actually visualize anything like this. On my way to campus this morning, I started to get really nervous and apprehensive. I didn’t really know what to expect. Once I got to the entrance of the office though I was hit with this wave of emotional pain. I saw the swastika on the carpet and I felt like I had been kicked in the chest.”

In line with public perception, Vashti never felt much homophobia on campus. But the University has been under heat lately from students and in the media regarding The Pacifica Forum, a discussion group, led by 94-year-old retired University of Oregon progressor Orval Etter, which holds on-campus meetings though it is not affiliated with the school. (School policy allows retired professors to rent space on campus to hold events.) Identified as a white nationalist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (“the most comprehensive and certainly the best funded study there is out there”), the group says it is intended to “generate intellectual dialogue about controversial racial topics.”

“We really want to stress the idea that an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.”

As reported in The US News: “The ASUO Senate has been arguing the merits of asking Pacifica to stop meeting on the school’s campus for the same reasons the SPLC called the forum a hate group: Many of the group’s regular members allegedly espouse anti-Semitic ideas. The group has also invited Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazi groups to campus.”

“It’s my understanding that during their meetings they have repeatedly addressed the LGBTQ community in a very negative, homophobic sense,” Vashti told us. “I know that one of their meetings a couple weeks ago they claimed that homosexuality is a psychological disorder and that all LGBTQ identified folks need to be institutionalized.”

Vashti explained: “Two weeks ago a resolution drafted by the Associated Students of the University of Oregon senate vice president, the student body vice president, and several other student senators was brought to the ASUO senate asking the Pacifica Forum to remove themselves from campus. The hope was that the senate would pass the resolution and in doing so take a strong stance against hate speech and in support of student safety.”

As reported by The Daily Emerald, “The resolution’s opponents said they were nervous that passing the measure would violate Pacifica Forum members’ First Amendment rights.” The Pacifica Forum insists that it is not a Neo-Nazi or white nationalist hate group, as it has been labeled by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and that it cannot legally be expunged from government property, although its meetings have been moved to the furthest possible end of campus amid the recent controversy.

Due to the Pacifica Forum’s affiliation with a former UO professor, the Forum is able to utilize university facilities free of charge, administration is working to rewrite policies regarding the allocation of funds and spaces.

Many students expressed fear of violence on campus due to the Pacifica Forum’s presence. The group, which has previously hosted discussions on topics including “Swastikas: A personal passion,” invited a controversial speaker in December who is said to have “blamed “Jewish lies” for the Iraq War, praised the swastika as a symbol of white people, showed a neo-Nazi propaganda video, and led several audience members in an enthusiastic Nazi salute.”

Partially in response to that discussion, the conversation was especially heated earlier this month when half of the attendees of “Everything You Wanted to Know About the Pacifica Forum But Were Afraid to Ask” were there to protest the event. Jimmy Marr, the Sieg heil guy, was there too; mocking the protesters in full Scottish regalia while delivering the salute over and over.

University Lawyers are currently reviewing the resolution to keep the group off-campus.

Vashti echoes these concerns: “As a self-identified queer woman of color, I feel very threatened by the presence of the Pacifia Forum on campus. They have directly targeted those three communities. I was in full support of the resolution and fully support the new resolution that will be presented this week at senate. If anything, the hate crime committed against my office (and as a result, myself) only further strengthens my support. I am not going to let these threats scare me. The people who did this need to realize that they can hate us, they can hurt us, they can say and do terrible things to us but we will not allow them to break us.”

Although there is no evidence linking the group to the vandalism, Alex Ezperaza told The Oregonian that “there was speculation that the vandalism might be linked to a recent discussion about the meaning of the swastika held by the Pacifica Forum, an outside group that meets regularly on the campus.”

Vashti says, “I’d say that it’s general consensus within the student body that this crime, while it cannot be directly attributed to the Pacifica Forum or any of its members, may most likely be attributed to the current campus climate that has resulted from the presence of the Pacifica Forum on campus.”


The Daily Emerald has the following quote from Pacifica Forum member Dawn Coslow, who condemned the act, but called its being linked to the Forum “ridiculous,” stating: “Any kind of hate crime is an absolutely disgraceful, despicable act, and I have sympathy for all the students in that office who have suffered this hideous act.”

Police have no suspects though they have removed the section of the floor where the swastika was painted for investigation, and the LGBTQ union has been covering the spot with posters. “People were coming in and out of the office all day filling out Bias Response Team report forms, signing posters that we have covering the area where the swastika was cut out and outside the office, and just showing up to show support and solidarity,” says Vashti. “I don’t want to speak for the queer community or the student body. But from what I observed today, we have received strong support from the other student unions, the student government, university administration, and the community at large.”

“I am extremely proud of the students who came out today and helped organize events for this week in response to all this. I am grateful to the administration and the university president for joining those meetings and speaking to the issue and actually taking a stance.”

The LGBTQ council spent the day with student union representatives, ASUO executives and other student leaders creating a plan of action. They’ve set up events, including a candlelight vigil for Tuesday where the students will walk through campus, concluding with speakers from university staff and faculty, community members, and any students comfortable with speaking out. On Wednesday students are planning a mid-day rally to raise awareness and give visibility to the incident. The students hope that one of the speakers for that event, which will take place on the main street of campus, will be secretary of state Bill Bradbury.

Vashti and her peers hope that this incident can be used as an opportunity to get important discussions started, bring awareness to the rest of the community and address the effects of hate crimes on campus communities and in general as well as to stress the idea that an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.

“Personally, I’m angry,” Vashti says. “Plain and simple. I’m feeling so much rage. I was hoping never to experience something like this. And now I have. And it scares me.”

http://www.autostraddle.com/university- ... zed-31370/

[AlicetheKurious]

Although there is no evidence linking the group to the vandalism, Alex Ezperaza told The Oregonian that “there was speculation that the vandalism might be linked to a recent discussion about the meaning of the swastika held by the Pacifica Forum, an outside group that meets regularly on the campus.”

Vashti says, “I’d say that it’s general consensus within the student body that this crime, while it cannot be directly attributed to the Pacifica Forum or any of its members, may most likely be attributed to the current campus climate that has resulted from the presence of the Pacifica Forum on campus.”

The Daily Emerald has the following quote from Pacifica Forum member Dawn Coslow, who condemned the act, but called its being linked to the Forum “ridiculous,” stating: “Any kind of hate crime is an absolutely disgraceful, despicable act, and I have sympathy for all the students in that office who have suffered this hideous act.”

Police have no suspects though they have removed the section of the floor where the swastika was painted for investigation, and the LGBTQ union has been covering the spot with posters. “People were coming in and out of the office all day filling out Bias Response Team report forms, signing posters that we have covering the area where the swastika was cut out and outside the office, and just showing up to show support and solidarity,” says Vashti. “I don’t want to speak for the queer community or the student body. But from what I observed today, we have received strong support from the other student unions, the student government, university administration, and the community at large.”

“I am extremely proud of the students who came out today and helped organize events for this week in response to all this. I am grateful to the administration and the university president for joining those meetings and speaking to the issue and actually taking a stance.”

Smells fishy to me, and incredibly convenient for those who have been campaigning unsuccessfully to have the Forum banned. I'd be very interested in the results of a proper investigation to determine just who is really behind this vandalism.

[American Dream]

So Alice, you are aware of what the Pacifica Forum is doing, and you support their work?