The Rise of Bigot America Thread

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Re: The Rise of Bigot America Thread

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Mar 07, 2017 10:04 am

COMMENT: NICOLE COLSON

Inflicting terror on immigrant communities
Nicole Colson reports on the new wave of attacks on undocumented immigrants and what it will take to stand up to the Trump administration's racist assault.

March 6, 2017

THEY TOOK Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez as he was on his way to drop his daughters off at school.

Footage of Avelica-Gonzalez's arrest, caught on video by his 13-year-old daughter on her cell phone, showed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers handcuffing the man before driving him away, as his distraught children sobbed uncontrollably in the family's car.

Joel Guerrero was grabbed at what he thought would be a routine check-in with immigration authorities--something he had done without incident every six months for more than six years.

Daniela Vargas, a 22 year old who came to the U.S. when she was just 7 years old, was snatched just moments after she finished speaking out at a press conference to denounce the escalating attacks on her community, including the arrest of her father and brother weeks earlier.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THESE ARE just a few of the horror stories of the terror being inflicted on immigrants by the Trump administration.

Making good on threats he made during his campaign, Trump has ramped up the deportation machine, ordering, among other things, that immigration authorities "[e]nsure that aliens ordered removed from the United States are promptly removed," as an executive order reads.

This has translated to a mass crackdown on those in the U.S. without documentation, regardless of their history or circumstances, their ties to the community, the families that rely on them, or what they might face upon return to countries that are, in many cases, wracked with violence and poverty.

The Trump administration claims it is simply rounding up "dangerous" immigrants--those with prior convictions and deportation orders first among them--in order to make America "safe."

In reality, many of those being arrested and deported are guilty of "crimes" that shouldn't be called crimes at all. In other cases, green cards were revoked and deportation orders issued after an individual missed a scheduled hearing because they were unable to read notices in English or when paperwork was sent to a wrong address.

Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez, for example, was ordered to be ripped away from his children because of a DUI conviction from nearly 10 years ago and an improper car registration from more than 20 years ago.

In Joel Guerrero's case, officials recently decided to enforce a 2014 deportation order--one that he didn't know had been issued--stemming from a misdemeanor drug conviction and a missed court date.

"We got married last month," Guerrero's wife Jessica explained to the New York Daily News. "I'm six months pregnant. He's working. He pays taxes. He was doing everything right. At this point, what's done is done, but it was a single, small pot plant in North Carolina. Yes, he made a mistake, but this is an extreme punishment for something that's over a decade old at this point."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THERE ARE nearly 1 million "fugitive aliens" in the U.S.--immigrants who have been ordered deported, in some cases years ago, but who have remained in the U.S., often with families, including children who are U.S. citizens, and deep roots in their communities.

Most are guilty of little more than seeking a life in the U.S. "[S]lightly less than one in five people facing deportation has been convicted of a crime in the United States," the New York Times reported, but if there are deportation orders in place, regardless of why, those who are apprehended or who turn themselves in when ordered can be scheduled for deportation almost immediately.

Plenty of undocumented people without any criminal record also have been swept up in a dragnet supposedly aimed at convicted felons, to hear Donald Trump tell it.

Last month, when ICE agents came to Manuel Mosqueda Lopez's Los Angeles home looking for someone else, they discovered that the 50-year-old house painter was himself undocumented and put him on a bus to Tijuana, Mexico--until lawyers were able to temporarily stop his deportation.

Despite the myths perpetrated by the right, undocumented immigrants are no more likely to commit crimes than any other demographic group. In fact, studies show undocumented immigrants are incarcerated at lower rates than the documented population.

And many of the "crimes" being used as a pretext for deportation are victimless. One commonplace violation is using a fake Social Security number to gain employment. What this actually amounts to is undocumented people contributing to the Social Security system that will pay benefits to other people, while never being able to access it for themselves.

As the Atlantic's Peter Beinart wrote:

Trump's allies may believe that sneaking into the United States, or using a fake social security number to get a job, predisposes people to rob, rape, or kill. But the evidence does not bear this out. So if Trump's goal is increasing public safety, publishing a list of crimes committed by unauthorized immigrants is irrational. It's like publishing a list of crimes committed by people with red-hair.

If, however, Trump's goal is stigmatizing a vulnerable class of people, then publicizing their crimes--and their crimes alone--makes sense. It's been a tactic bigots have used more than a century.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

WHILE TRUMP may be escalating attacks on the undocumented, the response from the Democrats has been, at best, muted, in large part because the deportation machine was running at top speed by Barack Obama, who sent 2.5 million across the border during his presidency. As the Nation's Laila Lalami noted:

A significant percentage of those deported under Obama had committed only minor offenses, such as traffic violations or drug possession. Only after a huge outcry by immigration advocates did the administration change course and begin restricting its deportation orders to serious criminal offenders.

Now, if Trump gets his way, even worse may be in store for some of the most vulnerable undocumented immigrants. According to Reuters, the Department of Homeland Security is now considering an unbelievably cruel proposal to separate undocumented women from their children when they are caught crossing into the U.S.

The policy change would allow the government to keep parents in custody as they wait for asylum hearings and fight deportation orders. Marielena Hincapie, executive director at the National Immigration Law Center, told Reuters that if implemented, the new policy "could create lifelong psychological trauma, especially for children that have just completed a perilous journey from Central America."

For many of these undocumented who face deportation to Central and South America, their very lives are in danger.

The New York Times reported on the story of a an undocumented immigrant named Juan, who fled Colombia for the U.S. six years ago. He is scheduled for deportation on March 21 after being denied a request for asylum--despite the fact that he says he came to the U.S. after paramilitary forces in Colombia tried to kill him.

"I feel hopeless," Juan told the Times. "My wife is here, my son is here. They are my world. I have nowhere else to run to. I've run out of options."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THE ARRESTS taking place in immigrant communities seem designed to inflict maximum terror on a population already under constant threat. And they are being carried out by a wing of law enforcement only too happy to embrace its racist marching orders.

Take the case of Daniela Vargas, the 22-year-old who was taken into custody by ICE agents after a press conference advocating for the undocumented. Vargas had previously received protected status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, but her status expired when she didn't have the money for a fee to renew it.

Despite the fact that she doesn't have a criminal record and recently filed to renew her DACA status, she was arrested--likely as payback for speaking out publicly after her father and brother were arrested by ICE in February. According to her attorney, the agents who pulled her car over after she spoke at the press conference reportedly told her, "You know who we are, you know what we're here for."

"It could be retaliation," Vargas' lawyer, Abby Peterson, told the Huffington Post. "They had been reading about her in the news, they had seen her at this press conference...[maybe] they didn't want to hear it anymore."

On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly touted his "support" from ICE. He was, in typical form, exaggerating--federal agencies don't endorse candidates.

But the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council, a union that represents 5,000 federal immigration officers and law enforcement support staff, did endorse Trump on the basis that he would "protect American jobs, wages and lives." Additionally, 11 leaders of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents 16,500 agents, also backed Trump's candidacy.

Trump's executive orders on immigration are a green light for the racists inside these agencies. This has given rise to incidents like a February one in which Customs and Border Protection agents demanded "documents" from all of the passengers on a domestic flight from San Francisco to New York City, as they searched for an individual who had been ordered removed by an immigration judge after a criminal conviction. (It was later determined the person in question was not on the flight.)

The fact that the demand to see passengers' documentation was likely unconstitutional didn't deter them.

Or there was the reported questioning--for nearly two hours--of Muhammad Ali Jr., son of famed boxed Muhammad Ali, at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport upon returning from a trip to Jamaica in February.

During questioning, Ali says agents repeatedly asked about his religious beliefs. "I was shocked more than anything," Ali told the Courier-Journal i, adding, "Should I have had to say I'm a Christian to get back into the U.S?"

Australian children's book author Mem Fox said that when she was detained by immigration officials at Los Angeles International Airport last month as she travelled from Australia to the U.S. for a conference, she and others--in particular, an Iranian woman who spoke Farsi--were berated for hours by Customs and Border Protection agents. Fox recounted:

I kept thinking that if this were happening to me, a person who is white, articulate, educated and fluent in English, what on earth is happening to people who don't have my power?

That's the heartbreak of it. Remember, I wasn't pulled out because I'm some kind of revolutionary activist, but my God, I am now. I am on the front line. If we don't stand up and shout, good sense and good will not prevail, and my voice will be one of the loudest.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

FOX'S RESPONSE is the right one: Relentless opposition to Trump, his racist policies and all those who enable them--and relentless solidarity with those who are under attack.

The emergency networks springing into formation in cities and neighborhoods across the country--drawing hundreds and more who say they will turn out to confront raids and arrests--will be vital to stopping the deportation machine.

So will the pledge by a network of churches and private homeowners to act as sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants and their families--and the universities and even cities that are following suit under pressure from community members to take a stand.

Such acts of solidarity--large and small--will be crucial in the coming weeks and months to beat back the bigotry of the Trump administration and send a message that we won't allow racist scapegoating.

As Ricardo Mireles, executive director of the school that two of Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez's daughters attend, said:

We held a school-wide assembly today for all of our students and staff so that we can be in solidarity with the family. What we wanted to communicate to our families was that we are in solidarity with that family, and we are in solidarity with all families. And we are going to stand together if this were to happen again.
https://socialistworker.org/2017/03/06/ ... ommunities


ACLU COMMENT ON TRUMP’S NEW MUSLIM BAN
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March 6, 2017
NEW YORK — The Trump administration today announced a new Muslim ban executive order.

Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, had this reaction:

“The Trump administration has conceded that its original Muslim ban was indefensible. Unfortunately, it has replaced it with a scaled-back version that shares the same fatal flaws. The only way to actually fix the Muslim ban is not to have a Muslim ban. Instead, President Trump has recommitted himself to religious discrimination, and he can expect continued disapproval from both the courts and the people.

“What's more, the changes the Trump administration has made, and everything we've learned since the original ban rolled out, completely undermine the bogus national security justifications the president has tried to hide behind and only strengthen the case against his unconstitutional executive orders.”
https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-comment- ... muslim-ban
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Rise of Bigot America Thread

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Mar 07, 2017 10:32 pm

Hawaii to challenge new travel ban in court
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Rise of Bigot America Thread

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 15, 2017 8:42 am

ACT For America Fires Prominent Chapter Leader, But Many Racists Remain
March 09, 2017

Stephen Piggott
ACT for America — the largest grassroots anti-Muslim group in the country — has come under fire recently. Prominent San Antonio, ACT chapter leader Roy White was fired in late February for refusing to cancel a meeting designed to show activists how to “shut down mosques.”

A week earlier, on February 16 in North Carolina, ACT member Robert Goodwill was recorded by a Triad City Beat reporter in a conversation with a man who argued that all Muslims in America should be killed. Goodwill’s response to the repeated calls to murder Muslims was “we’re not there yet.”

Following the North Carolina revelations and the firing of Roy White, ACT was in hot water again last week, when its Central Oklahoma chapter’s logo appeared on a questionnaire which the staff of outspoken anti-Muslim Rep. John Bennett to Muslim constituents. One of the questions asked was, “Do you beat your wife?”

Another bright star in the ACT universe is Dave Petteys, the leader of ACT’s 5280 Coalition, a grouping of ACT chapters based in and around Denver, Colorado. On multiple occasions, he has represented ACT in Europe at Human Dimension Implementation Meeting (HDIM) conferences put on by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the world’s largest security-oriented intergovernmental organization. The conferences are billed as Europe's largest annual human rights and democracy conference, and have invited anti-Muslim speakers from the U.S. in recent years.

Image
Dave Petteys of ACTS's 5280 Coalition.
Two months before Petteys travelled to from Warsaw to represent ACT at the 2016 HDIM conference, he left a comment on Counter-Currents, an overtly anti -Semitic website and publishing house run by white nationalist Greg Johnson. The pseudo-academic site runs lengthy white nationalist screeds and interviews with key players in the movement and also publishes the works of racists both current and long-deceased. On July 13 of last year, Petteys left a comment expressing interest in purchasing French white nationalist Guillaume Faye’s “The Colonization of Europe.” In the book Faye describes immigrant youth as “very well aware of the fact that they are conducting an ethnic civil war and that their goal is to aggress against the indigenous peoples.” For Faye, the only response is violent “reconquest” where “thunderbolts of Zeus and the hammers of Thor” will rain down upon the Mosques of Europe, according to the review of the book on the Counter-Currents website.

Image
Roy White was fired for advertising an event where people would learn how to “shut down mosques,” but what about an ACT chapter leader who paid money to an anti-Muslim activist to “investigate” mosques in his area? That’s exactly what Frank Thiboutot and his ACT chapter in Portland, Maine, did. Thiboutot, who goes by “Charles Martel” in his Disqus online comment profile, claimed that in June of 2014, ACT for America Maine hired Dave Gaubatz, author of the “Muslim Mafia”, to investigate several mosques in that state.

In a more recent comment, also on Disqus, Thiboutot wrote that his ACT chapter submitted Gaubatz’s affidavits from his mosque investigation to the Governor of Maine when ACT members met with him and another anti-Muslim figure, Jim Simpson.

Gaubatz is a rabidly anti-Muslim figure whose son infiltrated two American Muslim civil rights organizations. This served as the research for his father’s book. The younger Gaubatz works for Understanding the Threat (UTT), an organization training law enforcement on how to uncover jihadist cells run by disgraced ex-FBI agent John Guandolo.

Thiboutot, a well-known kickboxing instructor inducted into the World Karate Union Hall of Fame in 1998, doesn’t hold back when taking about Islam. “Islam is not a religion. It's a supremacist totalitarian political ideology cloaked as a religion,” he wrote on Disqus a few months back.

Jump from Maine to Arkansas where you’ll find Charles Fuqua, leader of the Batesville chapter of ACT. Fuqua is a lawyer and former legislator who is outspoken about Islam, and a number of other subjects.

Image
Charles Fuqua.
When he ran for office in 2012, a book Fuqua had written, “God’s Law – The Only Political Solution” came to light, revealing his extremist beliefs. Among them, was a call for “rebellious children” to be stoned to death. Fuqua also had a solution for America’s prison systems, writing, “Anyone that cannot be rehabilitated in two years should be executed.” As for Muslims, Fuqua writes: “I see no solution to the Muslim problem short of expelling all followers of the religion from the United States.” At a speaking engagement last year, Fuqua stated, “I maintain that to believe in Islam is to be a traitor to the United States. I think we need to wake up and get rid of the traitorous people.”

Along with the firing of Roy White, ACT head Brigitte Gabriel sent a not so subtle warning to its members.

“In no way, does our organization advocate, or tolerate bigotry, or threats of violence toward anyone, especially because of which God they may choose to worship” and following it up with, “To be clear: any ACT for America member that propagates such ideas antithetical to the values of our organization will have their membership revoked immediately.”

Firing Roy White was clearly a PR move by the organization, yet it remains to be seen whether Gabriel will also dump Petteys, Thiboutot and Fuqua for clear violations of ACT’s policy.
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/201 ... sts-remain


Anti-Muslim Group Leader Fired For Meeting On How To ‘Shut Mosques Down’

ByALLEGRA KIRKLANDPublishedFEBRUARY 27, 2017, 2:17 PM EDT

A prominent local conservative activist was fired as the San Antonio chapter leader of anti-Muslim group ACT for America after organizing a meeting last week on how to “shut mosques down,” the San Antonio Express-News reported.

This explicit phrasing used by retired Air Force Lt. Col. Roy White in his public promotion of the event pushed the group, which describes itself as “the NRA of national security” and believes Islamic sharia law presents an imminent threat to American society, to cut ties.

“The reason we were forced to let Lt. Col. White go was because he advertised on the Internet a chapter meeting to learn how to ‘shut mosques down,’” the national group said in a Friday email to supporters obtained by the Express-News.

The email praised White as “one of our best chapter leaders” and a “great patriot” but said he was dismissed “for legal and public reasons” after declining an order to cancel the meeting, according to the newspaper.

White, ACT and the local San Antonio chapter did not immediately respond Monday to TPM’s emails and calls requesting comment.

As of Monday morning, the San Antonio chapter’s website had no mention of the Feb. 23 meeting with Karen Lugo, author of “Mosques in America,” a guide to putting an end to “Islamist cultural schemes” like “mosque building” and creating “Muslim settlements” across the United States.

An EventBrite page for the event was still live, however. It promised attendees that Lugo would provide the answers to questions like “How many Mosques are there in the United States?” and “What do local officials need to know in order to use existing laws and codes to effectively push back?”

At the tail end of the Obama administration, the Justice Department had filed several lawsuits alleging that various communities had violated Muslims' constitutional right to worship by invoking obscure land use statutes to block mosque construction.

White, a Southwest Airlines pilot and leader of the Truth in Texas Textbooks Coalition, which seeks changes to alter perceived “errors” in state textbooks, had invited Lugo to speak at ACT events before. He has also made incendiary claims in his capacity as a chapter leader for the organization, recently telling the Washington Post that members of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national civil rights group, are “jihadists wearing suits.”

It appears that the sin that led to White’s ouster was his overly direct language about what he hoped to achieve.

In a second statement released Friday and obtained by the Express-News, ACT insisted it is “not in the business of shutting down any place of worship based on what religion it houses. We are in the business of making sure no house of worship incites violence in the name of religion, nor harbors or supports terrorists who wish our destruction.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center designates ACT as a hate group and its founder, Brigitte Gabriel, has argued that American Muslims should be barred from serving in public office because she believes they pose a security risk.

The San Antonio chapter is hardly shy about painting Muslim institutions as potential threats, either. Its website contains a tab with a link to IslamicFinder.org, a website that allows members to “see the mosques and Islamic schools and businesses near you.”

Despite its extreme views, ACT has found a firm foothold at the highest levels of government, hosting a Capitol Hill conference last year. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rep. Pete King (R-NY) were among the 10 GOP leaders who spoke at the event. President Donald Trump's ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn also serves as an adviser to the group's board.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/ ... wn-mosques
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Rise of Bigot America Thread

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 15, 2017 2:09 pm

AIPAC Gave $60K to Architect of Trump’s Muslim Ban

by Eli Clifton

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has been noticeably quiet about the Trump administration’s slowness to denounce the spike in anti-Semitic attacks and bomb threats, its nomination of an ambassador to Israel who described J Street as “worse than kapos,” and its ties to ethno-nationalists like White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon and senior adviser Stephen Miller. But AIPAC has done more than just tolerate the U.S. tilt toward extreme and often xenophobic views. Newly released tax filings show that the country’s biggest pro-Israel group financially contributed to the Center for Security Policy, the think-tank that played a pivotal role in engineering the Trump administration’s efforts to impose a ban on Muslim immigration.

In 2015, AIPAC launched a 501c4 advocacy group, Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran (CFNI). Expected to spend $20 million in July and August 2015, the group was “formed with the sole mission of educating the public ‘about the dangers of the proposed Iran deal,’” spokesman Patrick Dorton told The New York Times. The Times reported that the $20 million budget would go to ad buys in as many as 40 states as well as other advocacy.

Indeed, the group’s filing (viewable here) show that the AIPAC spin-off paid $18 million for “media related expenses,” $8.35 million for “phone program expenses,” and $58,200 for “survey expenses.”

Shortly after the group launched, my colleague Ali Gharib and I noticed that the group’s website featured two items promoting an exiled, ex-terrorist Iranian opposition group, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK). CFNI even used b-roll footage from a press conference held by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which the State Department deemed the MEK’s “political wing” (earning it a corresponding terrorist designation until the MEK was delisted as a terrorist organization in 2012).

After we reached out for comment, AIPAC’s anti-Iran deal advocacy group scrubbed their website of the MEK related materials, seemingly acknowledging a PR misstep. But the b-roll footage remained in their television commercials and on YouTube.

AIPAC’s flirtation with extreme groups appears to have gone even further than borrowing footage from the MEK.

Tax disclosures reveal that CFNI contributed $60,000 to “Secure Freedom,” a donation to a group with the tax-id number 52-1601976. That tax-id number belongs to Center for Security Policy, a hawkish think tank largely devoted to advocating for greater defense spending (it received funding from Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Raytheon, and General Electric) and pushing completely unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about American Muslim and Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the U.S. government.

The contact address for the contribution was a residential address in New Orleans belonging to Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) staffer Marsha Halteman. Halteman did not respond to questions about why her address appeared beneath the donation.

CSP is headed up by anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney who baselessly claimed that Hillary Clinton aid Huma Abedin, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, and former George W. Bush appointee Suhail Khan were part of a Muslim Brotherhood plot to infiltrate the U.S. government. He also asserted that the Missile Defense Agency logo “appears ominously to reflect a morphing of the Islamic crescent and star with the Obama campaign logo” and helped launch an interfaith group to support Trump’s anti-Muslim agenda.

Gaffney and Trump aide Kellyanne Conway played a pivotal role in bringing about the administration’s efforts to ban immigration from seven (and now six) Muslim-majority countries.

In 2015, Gaffney commissioned Conway’s firm to produce a poll about Muslim attitudes. Released in June 2015, the poll found that 51% of Muslims agreed that “Muslims in America should have the choice to being governed according to Shariah,” among other findings. But the poll’s methodology was deeply flawed, relying on an opt-in online survey which industry experts consider unreliable. Conway’s own firm later admitted the data was not “statistically representative of the entire U.S. Muslim population.”

None of that stopped Trump from citing the poll as his justification for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on,” on December 7, 2015.

It’s possible that the funds went to support CSP’s advocacy opposing the Iran nuclear agreement. Nonetheless, AIPAC’s willingness to partner with an organization whose president, Frank Gaffney, was denounced by the Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the American Conservative Union (which briefly banned him from their events after he accused political opponents of being part of a Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy) raises serious questions about AIPAC’s commitment to fighting bigotry, discrimination, and, in particular, Islamophobia.

Neither AIPAC nor CSP responded to requests for comment.
http://lobelog.com/aipac-gave-60k-to-ar ... uslim-ban/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Rise of Bigot America Thread

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Wed May 31, 2017 1:58 pm

Conservatives Start to Talk About Lynching Black People Again


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jfr2I2utGI
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
-Jim Garrison 1967
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Re: The Rise of Bigot America Thread

Postby 8bitagent » Thu Jun 01, 2017 5:46 am

seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 15, 2017 1:09 pm wrote:
AIPAC Gave $60K to Architect of Trump’s Muslim Ban

by Eli Clifton

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has been noticeably quiet about the Trump administration’s slowness to denounce the spike in anti-Semitic attacks and bomb threats, its nomination of an ambassador to Israel who described J Street as “worse than kapos,” and its ties to ethno-nationalists like White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon and senior adviser Stephen Miller. But AIPAC has done more than just tolerate the U.S. tilt toward extreme and often xenophobic views. Newly released tax filings show that the country’s biggest pro-Israel group financially contributed to the Center for Security Policy, the think-tank that played a pivotal role in engineering the Trump administration’s efforts to impose a ban on Muslim immigration.

In 2015, AIPAC launched a 501c4 advocacy group, Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran (CFNI). Expected to spend $20 million in July and August 2015, the group was “formed with the sole mission of educating the public ‘about the dangers of the proposed Iran deal,’” spokesman Patrick Dorton told The New York Times. The Times reported that the $20 million budget would go to ad buys in as many as 40 states as well as other advocacy.

Indeed, the group’s filing (viewable here) show that the AIPAC spin-off paid $18 million for “media related expenses,” $8.35 million for “phone program expenses,” and $58,200 for “survey expenses.”

Shortly after the group launched, my colleague Ali Gharib and I noticed that the group’s website featured two items promoting an exiled, ex-terrorist Iranian opposition group, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK). CFNI even used b-roll footage from a press conference held by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which the State Department deemed the MEK’s “political wing” (earning it a corresponding terrorist designation until the MEK was delisted as a terrorist organization in 2012).

After we reached out for comment, AIPAC’s anti-Iran deal advocacy group scrubbed their website of the MEK related materials, seemingly acknowledging a PR misstep. But the b-roll footage remained in their television commercials and on YouTube.

AIPAC’s flirtation with extreme groups appears to have gone even further than borrowing footage from the MEK.

Tax disclosures reveal that CFNI contributed $60,000 to “Secure Freedom,” a donation to a group with the tax-id number 52-1601976. That tax-id number belongs to Center for Security Policy, a hawkish think tank largely devoted to advocating for greater defense spending (it received funding from Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Raytheon, and General Electric) and pushing completely unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about American Muslim and Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the U.S. government.

The contact address for the contribution was a residential address in New Orleans belonging to Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) staffer Marsha Halteman. Halteman did not respond to questions about why her address appeared beneath the donation.

CSP is headed up by anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney who baselessly claimed that Hillary Clinton aid Huma Abedin, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, and former George W. Bush appointee Suhail Khan were part of a Muslim Brotherhood plot to infiltrate the U.S. government. He also asserted that the Missile Defense Agency logo “appears ominously to reflect a morphing of the Islamic crescent and star with the Obama campaign logo” and helped launch an interfaith group to support Trump’s anti-Muslim agenda.

Gaffney and Trump aide Kellyanne Conway played a pivotal role in bringing about the administration’s efforts to ban immigration from seven (and now six) Muslim-majority countries.

In 2015, Gaffney commissioned Conway’s firm to produce a poll about Muslim attitudes. Released in June 2015, the poll found that 51% of Muslims agreed that “Muslims in America should have the choice to being governed according to Shariah,” among other findings. But the poll’s methodology was deeply flawed, relying on an opt-in online survey which industry experts consider unreliable. Conway’s own firm later admitted the data was not “statistically representative of the entire U.S. Muslim population.”

None of that stopped Trump from citing the poll as his justification for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on,” on December 7, 2015.

It’s possible that the funds went to support CSP’s advocacy opposing the Iran nuclear agreement. Nonetheless, AIPAC’s willingness to partner with an organization whose president, Frank Gaffney, was denounced by the Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the American Conservative Union (which briefly banned him from their events after he accused political opponents of being part of a Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy) raises serious questions about AIPAC’s commitment to fighting bigotry, discrimination, and, in particular, Islamophobia.

Neither AIPAC nor CSP responded to requests for comment.
http://lobelog.com/aipac-gave-60k-to-ar ... uslim-ban/


Seems to me tho, that ISIS benefits both Israel and Saudi Arabia. So weird AIPAC would want to ban Muslims
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Re: The Rise of Bigot America Thread

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Jun 05, 2017 4:30 pm

GOP Rep Rants At ‘Islamic Horror’: Hunt, Identify, And ‘Kill Them All’

Image
By MATT SHUHAM Published JUNE 5, 2017 2:04 PM

A Republican congressman described a war between “all of Christendom” and “Islamic horror” in a Facebook post Sunday morning following a terrorist attack in London.

Next to a photo of the alleged perpetrators of the terrorist attack, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) wrote:

The free world… all of Christendom… is at war with Islamic horror. Not one penny of American treasure should be granted to any nation who harbors these heathen animals. Not a single radicalized Islamic suspect should be granted any measure of quarter. Their intended entry to the American homeland should be summarily denied. Every conceivable measure should be engaged to hunt them down. Hunt them, identity them, and kill them. Kill them all. For the sake of all that is good and righteous. Kill them all.
-Captain Clay Higgins

A spokesperson for Higgins’ congressional office didn’t immediately respond to TPM’s questions, including whether the congressman was advocating for a specific policy, or whether “kill them all” included the constitutional right to due process for suspected terrorists.

Mother Jones reported that Higgins’ campaign spokesperson, Chris Comeaux, wrote in an email to the publication: “Rep. Higgins is referring to terrorists. He’s advocating for hunting down and killing all of the terrorists. This is an idea all of America & Britain should be united behind.”

Higgins has long cultivated an image of himself as a tough-talking police officer and military veteran. Before being elected to Congress in 2016, he was know for his direct-to-camera warnings to would-be and accused criminals, as the spokesperson for the St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s Office in Opelousas, Louisiana.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/c ... l-them-all
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They could still get him out of office.
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Re: The Rise of Bigot America Thread

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Tue Jun 06, 2017 8:15 pm

Expect More Murders: Why the Radical Right Kills
The Portland attacks are just the tip of the white supremacist iceberg.
By Spencer Sunshine / Truthout
June 5, 2017, 1:20 PM GMT

The recent murders in Portland, Oregon, of two men whose throats were slashed when they tried to stop Islamophobic and racist harassment on a light rail train were not just random acts of violence. It is true that the alleged killer, Jeremy Christian, appears to be a troubled person. And it's true that the murders were outcroppings of the deeper violence of Islamophobia and white supremacy that pervades US society. But they were more than that. They were part of an ongoing spate of murders and shootings that are being directly inspired by the "scripted violence" of the right. When right-wing leaders and media demonize marginalized groups and broadcast calls about a supposed looming "white genocide," some of the rank-and-file will take these words literally -- and try to solve the problem with murder.

The Portland double-murder is only the latest in a series of politically motivated racist killings. In February 2017, Srinivas Kuchibhotla, an Indian man working in the US, was shot to death in a Kansas bar. His alleged murderer shouted "Go back to your country!" In March, a Black man, Timothy Caughman, was stabbed to death by a white man who had traveled to New York to allegedly kill all the Black men he could find. In Baltimore in May, a white man who was part of a Facebook group called "Alt Reich: Nation" allegedly stabbed a Black man, Richard Collins III, to death at a bus stop near the University of Maryland. And these incidents don't include the numerous other non-fatal shootings and attacks that have occurred.

Violence has made its way into the highest levels of US domestic politics in a way that hasn't been seen in decades. Donald Trump's 2016 campaign rallies raised the temperature: Amid fights at many of them, Trump himself egged the violence on, at one point saying, "So if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of 'em, would you? Seriously. Okay? Just knock the hell -- I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. I promise."

But even beyond these explicit appeals, political rhetoric based on demonization and scapegoating often leads to violence against the groups targeted, whether they are transgender folks, Jews, Muslims, immigrants or people of color. Chip Berlet, a long-time scholar of right-wing populist movements, lays out the details of how this dynamic works in his essay "Heroes Know Which Villains to Kill: How Coded Rhetoric Incites Scripted Violence," writing, "The leaders of organized political or social movements sometimes tell their followers that a specific group of 'Others' is plotting to destroy civilized society."

The leaders don't need to exhort their followers directly to violence. In fact, in the last couple decades, most white supremacist and Islamophobic leaders have learned they can conduct a campaign of vilification, scapegoating and demonization without ever directly calling for violence. As Berlet says, "history tells us that if this message is repeated vividly enough, loudly enough, often enough, and long enough -- it is only a matter of time before the bodies from the name scapegoated groups start to turn up." The followers will hear these dramatic claims of impending disaster, and take it upon themselves to be "heroes" -- by killing members of the demonized group, and thereby helping to "save" society.

More progressives -- particularly those who are not part of targeted groups -- should spend some time on radical-right websites, like the Oath Keepers, Infowars, and Daily Stormer, to get a sense of how heated the rhetoric is about the impending "genocide" of white people, the trope that Muslims are secret terrorists, and how communists are about to overthrow the US government.

Muslims are clearly one of the main targets of this radical-right rhetoric, as are transgender people (27 of whom were murdered last year, a record high). Now, a slew of death threats is also being directed at antifascist (or antifa for short) activists. At his court hearing on May 30, 2017, the alleged Portland murderer, Jeremy Christian, yelled in court, "Death to antifa!"

Right-wing activists, sensing how the Portland murders will create blowback against their movement, have gone into spin mode. They are trying to paint Jeremy Christian as a leftist, despite the fact that at the end of April he appeared at a so-called "Free Speech" demonstration in Portland with a baseball bat, threatening to kill left-wing activists, while sieg heiling and yelling "Hail Vinland." Many are also claiming he is simply a mentally ill individual -- just as the radical-right media did with Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who killed nine worshippers in a Black church in 2015. If mental illness were the cause of these political murders, such murders would be committed by people from all over the political spectrum. Instead, they are consistently committed by those on the radical right. (Moreover, such rhetoric stigmatizes mental health problems, even though people with mental illness are much more likely to be victims than perpetrators of acts of violence.)

Members of the radical right, from those in the Patriot movement to the avowed white supremacists, are an incredibly violent bunch. The Extremist Crime Database, funded by the federal government, tallied 272 fatalities committed by the "far right" between 1990 and 2017 -- a number that jumps to 440 when the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing is included. These murders are the result of a political culture of violence that the radical right cultivates. It does not just include the "scripted violence" that demonizes historically oppressed groups but also includes the formation of paramilitary units and the open justification, and praise of, political violence. Radical right activists kill people of color and other minority groups -- but also their own family members, as well as government officials and police. They even settle their internecine disputes with murder.

With Trump and his appointees openly circulating demonizing narratives, the genie is out of the American bottle. US presidents have limited political power, but they have an incredible ability to set the mood of the country. And the mood is ugly. We can expect more murders from hate-steeped men like Jeremy Christian.
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
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Re: The Rise of Bigot America Thread

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Mon Aug 07, 2017 6:08 pm

Since I consider most right-wing militias like the Oathkeepers to be inherently racist, I think the inclusion of this article in this thread to be appropriate:

‘Watch out for the paramilitaries’: Right-wing militia groups aligning with GOP officials under Trump
Travis Gettys
07 Aug 2017 at 13:53 ET

ImageTexas State Militia members (Facebook)

Right-wing militias are walking out of the anti-government shadows and into the Republican Party apparatus.

Armed anti-government groups have faced existential tension after President Donald Trump’s election, but they’ve resolved the dilemma by forming a “counter-resistance” to protesters of President Donald Trump and providing security to Republican groups, reported The Trace.

Timothy Snyder, a Yale University historian, warned after the election to “watch out for the paramilitaries,” saying the “end is nigh” when “men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching around with torches and pictures of a Leader.”

“When the pro-Leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the game is over,” Snyder warned.

That’s not quite what’s happening yet, but The Trace found at least five instances in three states where anti-government gun groups aligned themselves with conservative elected officials and GOP causes.

Oregon State Rep. Mike Nearman defended a legislative aide, Angela Roman, who spent four days in jail last month for lending a firearm to a fellow member of the Three Percent group who was prohibited from owning guns due to his felony record.

Roman and her Three Percenter friend also attended a pro-Trump rally in March that led to clashes with left-wing groups, and the militia member was arrested on weapons charges after injuring a police officer with pepper spray.

“I took a risk on hiring this young lady, and I’m pleased to announce that my bet paid off,” Neaman said after her arrest, although he failed to mention her involvement in the anti-government group.

The Republican Party of Multnomah County, Oregon, agreed to hire Three Percent members, as well as right-wing Oath Keepers, to provide security at future GOP events, saying they were natural allies because of their mutual support for Trump.

“His enemies are my enemies and his enemies are all our enemies,” said James Buchal, the local party chairman. “We are really in a life-or-death battle for the future of our society.”

In Michigan, nearly two dozen armed members of the Great Lakes Three Percenters and other militia groups stood guard outside a town council meeting after an armed left-wing group called Redneck Revolt protested violent threats against Muslims by the village president.

“We’re not here to intimidate anybody from either side,” said Mike Jenkins, the right-wing group’s leader, who admitted to coordinating the demonstration with the conservative elected official.

Texas State Militia members turned up last month to offer security during a peaceful protest at a public event for Gov. Greg Abbott, who had just announced his re-election campaign.

“There really was no need for semi-automatic weapons and the Texas Militia,” said Danny Diaz, a community organizer for one of the pro-immigrant protest groups. “It was just teachers, students, children, immigrants and people who care for human rights outside his event peacefully protesting … This type of intimidation tactic was way out of line.”
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
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Re: The Rise of Bigot America Thread

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Mon Aug 07, 2017 7:37 pm

Rampant White Supremacy at the White House As Trump Tries to Distract His Base
Trump's overt racism isn't aimed at liberals—it's about distracting his base away from the Russia scandal.
By Amanda Marcotte / Salon
August 7, 2017, 8:37 AM

Donald Trump is too dumb to be trusted to butter his own bread, but one thing his limited brain is capable of understanding is that tickling the racist impulses of much of white America makes them cheer for him. This explains the dizzying escalation of white supremacist gibberish emanating from the Trump administration over the past week. Trump is afraid he’s losing his proverbial “white working class” base and believes his best bet to win them back is to remind them that he shares their hatred and distrust of people they view as racially or ethnically Other. Unfortunately, he’s probably right.

A lot happened during the unofficial White Supremacy Week at the White House, so it’s a bit hard to keep up. The festivities kicked off last Friday, July 28, when Trump went to Long Island to give a speech to assembled police officers in which he painted immigrants as criminals and recommended police brutality, to great applause. On Tuesday of last week, the Justice Department announced it would focus resources on fighting discrimination against white people in college admissions, shoring up the racist myth that undeserving people of color are “stealing” opportunities from more deserving whites. On Wednesday, the White House rolled out, with great fanfare, a proposal to cut legal immigration in half, which was clearly meant to prioritize white and/or English-speaking immigrants over others.

It doesn’t take much sleuthing to figure out why all this is happening right now. The Russia investigation is heating up and there’s irrefutable proof that Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner attended a meeting with Russian operatives for the express purpose of undermining Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Trump practically apologized to Russia after being forced to sign a bipartisan sanctions bill, which does nothing to dispel fears that Vladimir Putin is pulling Trump’s strings. Prominent firings and subsequent leaks — which are probably linked — have further reinforced the public understanding of just how corrupt and incompetent our president is.

Unsurprisingly, Trump’s approval ratings have fallen to record lows, which would be hard on any president but is especially brutal for a malignant narcissist who desperately wants to believe people like him. Even more disturbing for Trump, his own base is starting to harbor doubts. Three-quarters of non-college-educated white voters liked Trump back in March, but now that number has plummeted to 43 percent, and about half such voters openly disapprove of him.

In light of all this, White Supremacy Week was almost certainly an effort from Team Trump to re-ingratiate Orange Mussolini to his base. Promising to kick non-white people in the teeth is about reminding the most hardcore troglodytes why they loved Trump in the first place. The administration is clearly hoping that their base voters will overlook a whole lot of stupidity, corruption and damage as long as the racist hits keep on coming.

Since Trump took office, there has been a tiresome and circular debate over whether his incessant antics are meant to be a distraction. “He’s just trying to distract us from Russia/health care/kleptocracy!” one group will say whenever Trump tweets some crazy nonsense or pushes some bigoted and half-assed policy idea, like the trans ban. “But these antics cause real damage to our country and we need to pay attention to them!” the other side will say.

This debate is doomed from the get-go because it’s based on a false premise, which is that liberals are the primary audience for these antics. The likelier explanation is that Trump is mostly trying to divert his conservative base away from the Russia scandal, among other things.

Understanding this can help resolve this distraction debate. Trump’s antics are both a distraction and a serious cause for concern. Whenever Trump starts to worry that his own base is starting to lose faith, he starts tossing those folks some red meat, often in the form of finding a minority group to pick on.

This also should help resolve the question of whether Trump’s antics are sincere or calculated: The answer is both. Trump is as dumb as a sack full of rocks, but he understands that racism gets his base excited because it gets him excited. If anything, his incuriosity and stupidity are an asset when it comes to connecting with his base. Clever people might overthink this — Trump just goes out and says the vile, empty crap he’d want to hear. It generally works.

Obviously, Trump has other tactics besides racism exploits to occupy his base’s attention so that they don’t have time to think about whether they really want a corrupt president who seems beholden to a Russian dictator. Churning up hatred of ambitious, smart women is always a good bet too, as evidenced by Trump’s Thursday night speech in West Virginia in front of a bunch of whooping jackasses chanting “Lock her up.” He also straight-up asks his followers to ignore the Russia story, as with his announcement that there “were no Russians in our campaign” in that same speech.

This is crude strategy, but it could be effective. Not the part where Trump gets defensive about Russia, of course — that just serves to remind people that he’s worried about the investigation. But for two years now, Trump has been able to get his supporters to forgive him pretty much everything as long as he keeps sticking it to people they hate, from liberals to feminists to people of color.

Some of these dramatics seem substantively empty. Trump rolled the “trans ban” out with a lot of pomp on Twitter, but there seems to have been no effort since then to draft an order the military is obliged to pay attention to. The proposal to reduce legal immigration was presented with even more fanfare — with sneering douchebag Stephen Miller, a fan fave among the deplorables, sent out to announce it — but there’s no evidence that Congress has any interest in picking up a bill that would reverse five decades’ worth of immigration legislation.

None of which is meant to minimize the harm that Trump can cause with all this. Even if Trump fails on every policy initiative he tries, he succeeds in whipping up bigotry and sowing animosity and fear in the public. Hate crimes are rising in number and white supremacists feel emboldened. Members of targeted groups are experiencing higher levels of fear and stress. The mental health damage being done by Trump, in and of itself, is impossible to measure. Some of his bigoted ideas are turning into policy, largely thanks to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who is as racist as Trump but not nearly as lazy or stupid.

All of which is why there’s a good reason to worry things will get worse before they get better. The Russia investigation is heating up and special counsel Robert Mueller has reportedly impaneled a grand jury. Whatever the legal importance of that fact, that kind of news makes it that much harder for Trump to pretend the Russia scandal is a media concoction with no substance to it. The need to distract his base is intensifying, so we can expect Trump to double down on the racism and misogyny in an effort to keep the reactionary base on his side.
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
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Re: The Rise of Bigot America Thread

Postby Jerky » Tue Aug 08, 2017 8:40 pm

Yes, last week was a particularly awful week to be an American, that's for goddamn sure.

YOPJerky
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Re: The Rise of Bigot America Thread

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Wed Aug 09, 2017 3:57 pm

Jerky » Tue Aug 08, 2017 7:40 pm wrote:Yes, last week was a particularly awful week to be an American, that's for goddamn sure.

YOPJerky


Oh yeah, someone bombed a mosque in Minnesota. The US government has yet to condemn this act of bigotry, either verbally or through a tweet. One might get the impression they don't care, or maybe they're OK with it.
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
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Re: The Rise of Bigot America Thread

Postby SonicG » Fri Aug 11, 2017 10:30 pm

In front of Clark Hall at UVA
Image

White men with torches. USA 2017.
"a poiminint tidal wave in a notion of dynamite"
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Re: The Rise of Bigot America Thread

Postby SonicG » Fri Aug 11, 2017 11:31 pm

Now gathering around statue of Thomas Jefferson. Chanting 'white lives matter!'

Image

White polo shirts tucked-in, beige slacks with black belts.... :thumbsup
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Re: The Rise of Bigot America Thread

Postby 82_28 » Sat Aug 12, 2017 12:23 am

SonicG » Fri Aug 11, 2017 6:30 pm wrote:In front of Clark Hall at UVA
Image

White men with torches. USA 2017.



Yikes.

Image

University of Virginia police dispersed a gathering of far-right protesters on the Charlottesville, Va. campus Friday night ahead of a planned demonstration by white nationalists, white supremacists and alt-right groups on Saturday.

Police arriving on the scene declared the protest on Friday an "unlawful assembly" and told demonstrators to disperse, video footage of the gathering shows.

Unlawful assembly declared at @UVA pic.twitter.com/y3UvphNYH3
— Allison Wrabel (@craftypanda) August 12, 2017

Protesters holding torches clustered on the campus in an apparent lead-up to a Saturday demonstration protesting Charlottesville's decision to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Photos and video of the protests posted on social media Friday showed demonstrators marching through dark walkways, chanting slogans like "white lives matter" and "you will not replace us."

"Blood and soil" #defendcville #unitetheright pic.twitter.com/GMHDsbrUBY
— Shay Horse (@HuntedHorse) August 12, 2017

Now gathering around statue of Thomas Jefferson. Chanting 'white lives matter!' pic.twitter.com/16cruXn5d8
— Joe Heim (@JoeHeim) August 12, 2017

White nationalists chanting "you will not replace us" and "white lives matter" at counter-protestors here at UVA. pic.twitter.com/rDbig1bRK4
— Joshua Eaton (@joshua_eaton) August 12, 2017

#UniteTheRight march chants "Blood and soil" pic.twitter.com/cX4O11jc35
— Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) August 12, 2017

The protest planned for Saturday has ignited intense opposition in Charlottesville, and large counter-demonstrations are expected to materialize in response.

Even on Friday, a group of protesters turned out in opposition to the far-right demonstration, chanting "black lives matter."

As members of the white nationalist alt-right gather in front of Jefferson statue, counter protesters chant #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/fGmdv7tQwJ
— Tim Dodson (@Tim_Dodson) August 12, 2017

Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer condemned the protest in a statement, calling the gathering "a cowardly parade of hatred, bigotry, racism, and intolerance."

"Everyone has a right under the First Amendment to express their opinion peaceably, so here's mine: not only as the Mayor of Charlottesville, but as a UVA faculty member and alumnus, I am beyond disgusted by this unsanctioned and despicable display of visual intimidation on a college campus," he said.


http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/346 ... f-saturday
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