So It Turns Out Jesus Really Wasn’t A Jew After All

Speaking of Christian Identity, if you’re interested in learning more about this rather unorthodox interpretation of the Christian faith, you should check out the Christian Separatist homepage, which the appeal from David Tate noted below was taken from. The religion is one of the least understood elements of the white power scene, despite the fact that there are a heck of a lot more Identity adherents in the U.S. than there are Nazi skinheads or David Duke supporters. And you just know that any page that has a non-sarcastic section called “Antichrist Watch” is going to be fun. For a more scholarly look at the religion, take a look at this article I wrote a few years back on the subject. It’s a rather well written and concise explanation of Identity beliefs, if I do say so myself.

Prison Life Just Isn’t As Free As It Should Be

David Tate was the youngest member of the Order, a white supremacist terrorist gang active in the 1980’s. In 1985, Tate shot to death a Missouri state trooper who had pulled him over for a traffic violation. After an intense manhunt, Tate was convicted of the murder and sentenced to life without parole. Now, it seems that he feels that his freedoms are being trampled upon by the Missouri prison system. He is supporting a lawsuit filed by another prisoner asking that the state officially recognize their religion, Christian Identity, as a legitimate one worthy of the same considerations given to other religions in the prison, such as private worship services and access to outside chaplains. Christian Identity, for those of you unfamiliar with the term, is a sect of Christianity that espouses white supremacy and a virulent hatred of Jews. Interestingly, Tate and his cohorts might actually have a case here. They note that the Nation of Islam, a black supremacist cult, is granted official status by the prison system. The outcome of the case could have national implications regarding the level of freedom prisoners in the U.S. are allowed to exercise.

Insane? Or Just Stupid?

Roger Elvick

Here’s an interesting article from the Southern Poverty Law Center on the recent legal troubles of Roger Elvick, founder of the “Redemption” theory. Elvick, a former member of the Aryan Nations, has been spreading his teachings via seminars and printed materials to America’s far right since the 1980’s. Redemption theory holds that when a person is born in the United States the federal government puts $630,000 into a secret bank account to cover that person’s eventual social security payments. Redemption theorists believe that through a complex series of legal maneuvers, they can free up this money for immediate use, and begin writing checks from the account. Needless to say it doesn’t work, and most redemption people end up in jail for writing hot checks. What’s interesting here is that when Elvick began to state his bizarre claims at his pretrial hearing, the presiding judge had him placed in a mental institution, where he was diagnosed with an “unclassified mental disorder” and underwent several months of treatment. There may in fact be some additional behaviors not noted in this article that contributed to the decision to institutionalize him. If not, then it would appear that there was a significant violation of his rights. It’s a common (and lazy) mistake to write off a person with unusual political beliefs as being insane. Although there are a lot of extremists who suffer from mental illness, the majority function fairly well on a day-to-day level. We should be very careful about labeling political dissent as a form of insanity. It is in my opinion getting much to close to an Orwellian groupthink mindset.

Storming The Ivory Tower

Ah, college. That dream-like time during which I expanded my knowledge under the tutelage of wise, open-minded professors who encouraged me to think in new and creative ways. OK, not really. College, for those of you who haven’t been, is a place where you will meet some of the most dogmatic leftist extremists on the planet. Unfortunately, the worst offenders will not be your fellow students (although they can be pretty bad), but those in positions of authority above you, namely your instructors, department heads, and college presidents. And despite what they will tell you, I can say from personal experience that you will in fact be denied fair grades and perhaps even your diploma if you rock the ideological boat. I have always been personally offended by the rank hypocrisy displayed by these institutions of “higher learning”. So it was with great pleasure that I recently discovered the website of the group FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), a watchdog group dedicated to exposing the worst examples of the suppression of individual rights on campuses in the U.S. Although they operate from a conservative perspective, FIRE (like the ACLU), seems to be willing to stick up for the rights of all students and professors. They have recently gone to bat for a Muslim student group and a PETA member who was denied the right to distribute literature on her campus. They currently have some interesting articles on their site regarding speech codes, the censorship of student newspapers, and a heavy-handed attempt to expel a conservative student from an educational department due to his political views. I urge you to check out their webpage, and maybe even donate a bit of money if you can.

A Note On Definitions

My significant other and myself got into a debate the other night over the contents of this blog. She, being an animal lover, thinks that it’s inappropriate to group organizations like PETA and SHAC with the National Alliance and David Duke. Her argument is that unlike the white supremacists, the radical animal rights groups are actually doing some good. In a way, I agree. I’m much, much more sympathetic with the aims of PETA than I am with those of the National Alliance. But that’s not really the point. This is a blog dedicated to describing the ideas and actions of extremists. I am defining extremism for the purposes of this site as being any person or group that seeks to force us all to think as they do. Clearly PETA, like the white power groups, fits the bill. PETA may in fact be partially right in their beliefs. But that is not enough to place them above criticism for their monist tendencies.

Why I Hate The Far Left

I think you could say that the most vicious critic of any belief system will be a person who once held the very belief he or she is now attacking. Perhaps that explains why I react with such fury to the actions of the far left, while I usually just role my eyes when I read a stupid post written by a white power person. You see, I was raised on leftism. My parents were ex-hippies, and brought up my siblings and myself with an egalitarian, enlightened mindset. As a young person, I loved to read about the exploits of my parent’s generation. The Berkeley Free Speech Movement. The March on the Pentagon. Woodstock. It all just seemed like so much fun. My heroes were Abbie Hoffman and Huey Newton. By age 19, I was a Dead Kennedys-listening, Noam Chomsky-reading, grow-your-hair-long lefty. I even had a picture of Karl Marx tacked to my bedroom wall. Then I began to read sources outside of the leftist continuum. My political outlook underwent a radical alteration. I began to see what much of what I had so strongly believed in actually led to. I realized that those on the far left are for the most part full of it. Think about what the far left promised us versus what they delivered: Feminism promised egalitarianism but instead produced an ideology based on man-hating. The left promised us racial harmony, but instead gave us a society so racially divided and uptight that any frank discussion of race relations is impossible. They promised us free speech, and instead gave us hate crime laws. The promised an academic atmosphere conducive to an open expression of ideas, and instead gave us a system so restrictive in its thinking that Orwell would have been impressed. The promised us economic egalitarianism, and then stood back dumbfounded as the most impoverished portions of our society threw their support behind the most reactionary elements of the political scene. They promised us peace, and instead gave us the mindless violence of the anarchist thugs. They promised a free world, then opposed the military drive to oust the Taliban. The promised us sexual liberation, and gave us anti-porn laws. They promised us an environment free of pollution, and then decided the beast way to get there was to burn SUVs. The joyful, freedom-loving left that blossomed in this country in the 1960’s is long gone. It has been replaced by pinched, bitter individuals who seek not to “do their own thing”, but to force their twisted PC reality on the rest of us.

Don’t take this as meaning that I’ve gone over to the conservatives. I’ll be damned if I’ll align myself with the religious fanatics and scary corporate types in that scene. But I save my personal rage for the left. Damnit, they lied to me. They lied to all of us.

Let Me Tell You Something You Already Know

One of my biggest pet peeves is people who won’t fess up to what they believe. In our overly-PC society, we all feel the pressure to conceal our more radical political ideas in the hopes of avoiding social sanctions. But when people start denying key tenants of their own doctrines, things start to get a bit ridiculous. When you’re studying extremist groups, you tend to come across a lot of this. Leftists claim they don’t hate America, conservatives claim they don’t hate gays, and perhaps most bizarrely, white supremacists claim they don’t hate blacks. Instead, they will explain that they are in fact “white nationalists”. You see, they only want the races to separate, not fight one another. The next time you hear that line, refer back to this particularly disgusting post from Vanguard News Network. Of course, you can make the argument that the people at VNN are radicals, and do not represent the majority of opinion within the white power scene. Maybe. Or perhaps there’re just more honest than the average extremist.

Chai Vang Heads For The Slammer

Chai Vang, as you might remember from this post, is a Laotian immigrant who became a cause celebrity of the American far left after he killed six white hunters in Wisconsin. Today his claims of self-defense were rejected by a jury, which found him guilty of murder. He now faces six mandatory life terms in prison. I can only hope that this case fades quickly from our collective memories. I do however fear that leftists who defended Vang before the trial will continue to do so, and drag this whole thing out for years to come. They would no doubt make much of the fact that an all-white jury convicted Vang, and claim that he was railroaded by a white judicial system in which a person of color can never get a fair trial. I can already see the benefit albums, bumper stickers, and celebrity appeals that invariably follow the incarceration of a person whom the left claims has been falsely convicted. And all for a person who (like almost every convicted killer defended by the far left) is clearly guilty.

Mom! Dad! Can We Go See The Mass Graves?

I’ll file this under my “originally thought it was a joke” category. However, it appears that Commie Travel is indeed real, and offers practical information for those who wish to visit important Communist sites around the world. For instance, they recommend making an informative, pleasant trip to beautiful…North Korea. As they put it, “Visits to Korea are always very luxury. It's only possible to visit the country by organized tours. Day and night you will be accompanied by two guides and a driver. They take care of everything you can think of. A very comfortable and easy way of traveling.” Right. The site promises to add a section on Cambodia, which should be interesting. It’s difficult to believe that there are still people out there who think Communism worked really well. From a political standpoint, it’s kind of like running into a Tyrannosaurs Rex in a national forest. Although I must admit that visiting such places would hold a certain morbid appeal, I would be just as interested in seeing areas that were important to the history of the Third Reich, and for the same reason.

That’s One Point For The Militias

As even casual readers of this site have no doubt noticed, I spend a tremendous amount of time mocking and deriding the actions and statements of extremist groups. This is in fact one of the two things I set out to do when I started this blog. I aimed to point out how ridiculous many of these people truly are, and how their more outrageous viewpoints can seep into mainstream discourse with disturbing frequency. But there was also a second purpose, one that I feel I may have neglected: To point out that extremist groups are valuable in that offer opinions that fall outside of mainstream thought, and therefore help us to “think outside of the box”. Even if their main point is wrong, studying how extremists think helps us to view issues in new and perhaps instructive ways. Occasionally, the extremists may even be right.

Let’s consider the American militia movement. They are often (and not without cause) described as being racist, paranoid, and violent. Their hoarding of survival supplies and weapons is described as manifestation of this paranoia. Even Penn and Teller devoted an episode of their excellent TV series “Bullsh*t” to mocking people who take the time to learn basic survival techniques. After all, the government will always be there to take care of us, right?

Which of course brings us to New Orleans. It strikes me that a person who horded large supplies of food and water in their homes might be better off than their neighbors who were starving at the Superdome (of course, this assumes that their home was not completely flooded out). And it just might have been a good idea to stockpile some guns and ammunition so you could protect said supplies against the roving gangs of armed thugs who ran wild after the flood. No need, say the militia critics, the police and National Guard will be there to protect us in times of natural disaster! Well, yes, in their own good time. And let’s say you do hold out for the four days until the authorities decide to show up. Let’s also say for the sake of argument that you and some of your neighbors form small collectives, and set up a fairly effective system of security and supply for your area? Those same police and National Guardsmen will be ready to remove you from your own home, at gunpoint if need be. And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. Suddenly, a group of people who stock their homes with guns and supplies, plan to take care of themselves at times of crisis, and have a healthy distrust of the state don’t seem quite so far out, do they?

Update: The New Orleans Police Dept. has decided not to forcibly evict persons from their homes. They must have realized the huge potential for a public relations nightmare inherent in such a plan.

The Couch Potato Gets His Assets Frozen

Frank Weltner

Frank Weltner is a somewhat well-know person here in the St. Louis area. He hosted his own AM radio show under the moniker “Couch Potato”, until it was cancelled due to its blatantly racist content. Weltner also runs Jew Watch, a site dedicated to cataloging the alleged plot by Jewish persons to destroy the “Aryan” race. He was (and perhaps still is) an important National Alliance member here in the Midwest. Yesterday I heard a clip from one of Weltner’s radio broadcasts on NPR. No doubt he would have been very pleased with the publicity had it not been in connection with civil proceedings being brought against him. It seems that Weltner has over the last few days put up at least ten different sites claiming to be collecting money for hurricane Katrina relief. The Missouri attorney general took a rather dim view of this, and froze his assents, claiming that Weltner was in fact funneling the collected funds into his own pocket. Given the gravity of the offense, criminal charges are likely. It’s hard to know what to make of Weltner. He’s a hardcore anti-Semite who until recently lived with a gay Jewish man. Other white supremacists seem to think he’s either mentally unbalanced, gay, a self-loathing Jew, or all of the above. Whatever Weltner’s true inner feelings, if it is proven in court that he fraudulently solicited relief funds, he may find himself facing some very serious consequences.

The Genocide In New Orleans

There seems to be more than enough blame to go around concerning the tremendous loss of life in New Orleans. I suspect some pretty big political heads will role before the debate dies down. Of course, there are a few who claim that the unacceptably high death count was due not to governmental incompetence, but was in fact the result of a deliberate campaign of genocide being waged against the African-American population by the federal government. These theories are mostly to be found amongst the more fringe elements of the black political scene, and of course those lovable conspiracy-obsessed leftists. The most clearly expressed explanation of this claim was given in an article written by an anarcho-commie twit named Kirsten Anderberg. Ms. Anderberg lays out the basic theory: The U.S. government hates black folks, and deliberately held up the relief efforts as part of a slow, deliberate campaign to kill off the black population of America. Wow. And I thought I had a low opinion of the current administration. In another screed, Ms. Anderberg proclaims, “Only Whites Claim Katrina's Poor Response is NOT Racist”. From her tone, I gather that that means all of those said whites are racist. Well, f*ck you too. Just in case you thought that this woman is an isolated nutcase, I found the links to her columns under the official news section of the San Francisco Independent Media page, which is a widely read leftist site in the Bay area. (And while you’re on Kristen’s site, make sure to check out her Vulva Library. It’s good for some bizarre laughs. )

Cheap Shot

OK, this is some lazy blogging, but I couldn’t resist. Kevin Alfred Strom, head of the neo-Nazi National Vanguard, recently published an article on his group’s website criticizing a summit held by anti-racists in New Jersey. Strom refers to the participants as “nerds”, and suggests that they are “at best a distraction”. Well Kevin, what would you call a virtually unknown neo-Nazi group with less than 200 members? I don’t think it would qualify as even a distraction. And as for the nerd thing, check out the photo of Kevin above. Doesn’t he kind of look like the stereotypical geek from every 80’s teen film you ever saw?

He Wins The Prize: Most Offensive Man In America

Fred Phelps is a man who leaves even a hardened fringe-watcher like me speechless. Check out this column, in which he suggests in the vilest possible terms that the city of New Orleans had it coming. Then remind yourself that this man is the leader of a fairly large congregation that receives national media coverage on a regular basis. Speaking of which, it appears that Fred and his flock were recently chased out of Smyrna, TN by some locals who were not too pleased with his protesting outside the funeral of two soldiers recently killed in Iraq. I’m honestly surprised that no one’s taken a shot at these assh*les yet.

New Orleans Is No More

It looks as if the city of New Orleans has undergone a level of destruction that can only be described as biblical. As I write this, there are unconfirmed reports of cannibalism coming out of the city. Extremists on both ends of the political spectrum have responded to the destruction in depressingly typical ways. Those on the racist right have claimed that the actions of the mostly African-American looters should be looked at as being a normal reaction for blacks in general to the absence of law enforcement. The radical leftists have gone to the opposite extreme, attempting to justify the looting as necessary for survival. When critics point out that jewelry and plasma screen TVs hardly qualify as survival items, said leftists respond by saying that the items in question would likely be ruined anyway by the floodwaters, and that insurance companies will cover the losses. Luckily, few American seem to be viewing the actions of the lowest strata of the black community in New Orleans as being representative of the whole, and look at the violence and looting with a healthy repugnance.