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An alleged plot by a young solider to coordinate with a neo-Nazi group to attack and kill members of his own army unit has put new scrutiny on the US militarys failure to address violent white supremacy within its own ranks.

Federal prosecutors have announced charges against current or former US military service members for plots linked to violent extremism nearly once a week this month.

A 2019 survey of readers of Military Times, an independent news outlet, found that more that 36% of active-duty troops surveyed said they had personally witnessed examples of white nationalism or ideological-driven racism within the ranks in recent months a 14% increase from a similar survey the year before.

But in a congressional hearing in February, military officials testified that mere membership in white supremacist groups is still not prohibited for American service members.

The US Department of Defense prohibited members of the military from active participation in white supremacist and other extremist groups since 1996, when decorated Gulf war veteran and white supremacist Timothy McVeigh carried out the Oklahoma City bombing. But active participation is still defined as attending rallies or fundraising for a racist group, not being a member, military officials testified in February.

During that hearing, the California congresswoman Jackie Speier called that approach woefully inadequate for addressing the countrys very serious domestic terror problem.

The potential for placing our service members at risk is so great, Speier said.

Military veterans have held leadership roles in some of the most prominent white supremacist groups that took part in the deadly rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. Investigative journalists and anti-fascist activists continue to uncover new members of violent racist groups who are also current members of the army, the marine corps, the air force and the national guard.

In January, a coast guard lieutenant was sentenced to more than 13 years in prison on gun and drug charges. He was accused by prosecutors of being a white nationalist who was plotting politically motivated attacks against journalists and Democratic politicians.

The same month, a US army veteran and a former combat engineer in the Canadian army reserve were among the alleged members of neo-Nazi group The Base who prosecutors said were discussing plans to create violence at a pro-gun rally in Virginia in order to spark a civil war.

In the month of June alone, prosecutors in California announced murder charges against an air force sergeant for the shooting death of a federal officer in Oakland, in addition to a previous murder charge for the shooting death of a local sheriffs deputy, and described the sergeant as part of a nascent anti-government movement obsessed with the boogaloo, or coming war against government tyranny.

The justice department announced charges against three Nevada men with military experience, alleging that they had planned to hijack a Las Vegas protest over George Floyds death, and that they were also inspired by anti-government boogaloo ideology. Experts who monitor extremist groups disagree on the extent to which the still-developing boogaloo ideology overlaps with white supremacy.

And federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment against 22-year-old Ethan Melzer for allegedly sending a British occultist neo-Nazi group sensitive details about his army unit in order to plan a deadly attack against his fellow soldiers.

While many veterans describe their military service as a crucial, and positive, experience of diversity in a country where many neighborhoods remain segregated by race, white supremacist organizing within the military has long been a problem.

The US armed forces were formally desegregated in 1948 and the last segregated units were disbanded in 1954, but the same racist violence and discrimination that black Americans experienced at home continued within the military and overseas during the Vietnam war.

American veterans have played key roles in the white supremacist movements in the United States for more than a century, according to Kathleen Belew, the author of Bring the War Home, a history of the contemporary American white power movement.

The Ku Klux Klan had new waves of resurgence after both world wars and after the Vietnam war, Belew writes, just as the recent wave of alt-right white supremacist organizing has been deeply shaped by Americas War on Terror in the Middle East.

Each wave of white supremacist organizing has involved racist veterans of the war in key leadership positions, made use of veterans military skills for training recruits and planning acts of violence, and was influenced ideologically by the political experiences of the war, Belew writes.

Experts on extremism have repeatedly warned that white power groups have sometimes encouraged young members to join the US military in order to get advanced weapons and other training in order to more effectively carry out attacks.

In the 1970s, the Ku Klux Klan was actively organizing on a US military base at Camp Pendleton in southern California, and Klan members were harassing and attacking black marines for years before an outright fight prompted official intervention.

Efforts to address the danger of white supremacist organizing among service members and veterans has been met with political opposition from Republicans.

In 2009, Republicans forced Obamas department of homeland security chief to apologize after an intelligence briefing warned that US military veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would be vulnerable to radicalization by violent white supremacist and antigovernment groups.

Conservative commentators at the time portrayed the briefing as an outrageous attack: how could the nations first black president portray standard, ordinary, everyday conservatives as posing a bigger threat to this country than al Qaeda terrorists?

The Republican pushback had a chilling effect on government monitoring of rightwing extremism, teaching government employees about the political risk of focusing on domestic terrorism, according to Daryl Johnson, the former career analyst who lead the team that produced the report.

Johnson has argued that Republican officials have blood on their hands, and that more aggressive government intervention could have prevented some of the white supremacist violence the United States has seen over the past four years.

But Johnson said this week that the drumbeat of federal charges against extremists in recent weeks could be a positive sign.

The charges against Melzer, the alleged neo-Nazi collaborator, sounds like an FBI sting operation to me, and thats important because that lets me know that the FBI is starting to take this threat seriously, Johnson said.

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How the US military has failed to address white supremacy in its ranks - The Guardian

Ive wondered if the marauding vandals will come eventually for the Darwin statues. I hope NOT, but lets face it between Francis Scott Key or Ulysses Grant, on one hand, and Charles Darwin on the other, whose work has done more to undergird racism? Theres no contest.

A classic episode of ID the Future, republished now, is eerie in its relevance to the culture at the moment. Host and science historian Michael Keas interviewed historian and Center for Science & Culture Senior Fellow Richard Weikart about the racial pseudoscience thats integral to the Darwinian scientific heritage.

As Professor Weikart explains, Darwins racism is not incidental to his case for evolution. Its not as if he was merely a product of his time, with the reprehensible attitudes held by other upper class Brits when he wrote his books. Yes, he was anti-slavery. And yes, he embodied the racism that came before him. He didnt invent it. But he also used it as evidence for his theory. He believed that different races of humans represented biological variations (in intelligence, moral capacity, and more) on which the natural selection process could work, just as it could on finch beaks. His conclusion of a racial hierarchy with Africans at the bottom, his projection of eventual racial extermination, were no stray inference. The documentaries Human Zoos and The Biology of the Second Reich show how Darwinian theory continued to motivate racism, eugenic drives, and genocide into the 20th century.

Weikart continues by noting that later Darwinists (such as Peter Singer) drew logical consequences from evolution, including that since all human beings are the product of random natural forces, they possess no special dignity. Human life is not precious. Or to put it another way, via John Zmirak: NO LIVES MATTER. By contrast, the religious traditions that evolutionary theory pushes aside possess ample reason for respecting humans universally as equals, of identical value and dignity, no matter the color of their skin. Of course, there have been religious racists. But that is a contradiction with their professed faith. Those who call for vandalizing churches because of depictions of a white Jesus dont understand this.

On the other hand, while most evolutionists today reject scientific racism, with exceptions like James Watson they have no necessary reason for doing so. White nationalists of the Alt-Right appreciate that not as a bug but as a feature.

Download the podcast or listen to it here. Listen and learn. Find out more about Weikarts books here.

And say a prayer for the statues, all of them. Some have argued that the vandals have no agenda other than anarchy and destruction. Ill be persuaded of that if they pull down the Lenin statue in Seattle. Again, I hope they dont! In its way, it is a delightful if perverse symbol of our city. Lets hope Darwin and Lenin are both safe tonight, along with Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and other iconic historical figures.

Photo: Statue of Charles Darwin, Shrewsbury Library, by Bs0u10e01 / CC BY-SA.

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Darwinism and No Lives Matter - Discovery Institute

Toronto police are investigating after a resident spotted posters and stickers promoting white nationalism in south Etobicoke on the weekend.

The posters, aimed at white people, contained messages such as: "Never apologise for being white," and "There is a war on whites" and "It's okay to be white."

The stickers said: "Think Green Buy Local," but included a website address for a Canadian white nationalist movement.

Coun. MarkGrimes, who represents Ward 3, Etobicoke-Lakeshore, said he asked city staff to remove the posters and stickers attached tolight poles, bus shelters and parking meters in Etobicoke.

Grimes also alerted police, who said the posters and stickers were seen in the area ofDundas Street West and Royal York Road.

Brady Brenot, a local resident, said he was angry when he saw the posters and stickers and he removed as many as he could. There were at least 25 on Bloor Street Weston Saturday morning, he said.

"Some people might think that somebody else will take care of it, or might think they might be putting themselves in danger by doing it themselves. But we have to take care of our own neighbourhoods. We have put a stop to this type of thing before it takes hold," he said.

Brenot saidhe first saw the posters and stickers duringa walkon Saturday.

"I think the first thing that I saw was one of these stickers on the pedestrian crossing signal, like over there, stuck to the front of it. 'Never apologize for being white.' I think thatwas that one," Brenot said. "Then, I saw another one and I got more angry. As I was walking down here, I saw another one after that. It was stuck to a parking meter, and I just decided, that's enough of that. I started to take photos of them and rip them off as I walked along."

Brenot said there was no mistaking what the messages were trying to say. "They're really transparent. The ones that I was seeing, it was really obvious what they were trying to get across," he said.

Some stickers included the words, Hundred-Handers, an alt-right group known for similar sticker campaigns in Europe.

Grimes, for his part, said he received an email from a resident on Saturday. His office reported the posters and stickers immediately to city staff for removal as soon as possible. Grimes said he also spoke to police officers at 22 Division.

"I understand that the resident took it upon themselves to remove a number of the stickers, and I have followed up with city staff to ensure that all remaining stickers are removed," Grimes said.

"This is totally unacceptable. It's 2020 and we like to think that we've progressed far beyond this type of narrow minded thinking, but this act affirms that there is still so much more to be done. It is mind boggling that in this day and age people still have this mentality," headded.

Grimes said Etobicoke-Lakeshorestands with Toronto's Black, Indigenous and people of colour, LGBTQS2+ and immigrantcommunities against intolerance.

"Racism and discrimination exist, and we must do more. We must call out intolerance when we see it, and make it known that this hatred is not representative of our values as Torontonians," he said.

"These posters are not representative of our community."

Nigel Barriffe, president of the Urban Alliance on Race Relations, a non-profit organization that hasbeen working to fightracism in Toronto neighbourhoods since the 1970s, said the posters and stickers are hateful and whoever posted them is guilty ofa hate crime.

"I mean, I'm ridingaround neighbourhoods with my four-year-old. I don't want him to asking me,'What does this mean? Why do these people hate me? Because of the colour of my skin?'" Barriffe said.

"If folks in the community feel like, 'Well, what's the sense in me making a complaint because nothing's going to be done anyway,' these white supremacists just get to move through our society with impunity."

Const. Michelle Flannery, spokesperson for the Toronto Police Service, said the investigation is in its early stages. Officers are continuing to canvass the neighbourhood for witnesses and video.

"Some of the posters observed had the words scratched out and several of the posters were removed by police," Flannery said.

Police are appealing for anyone with information to call investigatorsat (416) 808-1100 or CrimeStoppers if they wish to remain anonymous.

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Posters, stickers promoting white nationalism appear in south Etobicoke - CBC.ca

The result is The Atlantics first-ever feature-length documentary, White Noise, which focuses on the lives of three far-right figures: Mike Cernovich, a conspiracy theorist and a sex blogger turned media entrepreneur; Lauren Southern, an anti-feminist, anti-immigration YouTube star; and Richard Spencer, a white-power ideologue.

J.M. Berger: Trump is the glue that binds the alt-right

Progressives like to believe that racism is an opiate of the ignorant. But the alt-rights leaders are educated and wealthy, groomed at some of Americas most prestigious institutions. The more time I spent documenting the movement, the more ubiquitous I realized it was. I bumped into one subject dancing in Bushwick with his Asian girlfriend, and another walking around DuPont Circle hitting a vape. Their racism is woven into the fabric of New York, Washington, D.C., and Paris, just as much as Birmingham, Alabama, or Little Rock, Arkansas.

During a visit to Richard Spencers apartment in Alexandria, Virginia, I began to understand how the alt-right works. Evan McLaren, a lawyer, wrote master plans on a whiteboard. A band of college kids poured whiskey for Spencer, adjusted his gold-framed Napoleon painting, and discussed the coming Identitarian revolution. Spencer offered a sense of historical purpose to his bored, middle-class followers. In his telling, they werent just white Americans, but descendants of the Greeks and Romans. Myths are more powerful than rationality, Spencer told me. We make life worth living.

Read: Trumps white-nationalist pipeline

White Noise is about the seductive power of extremism. Hatred feels good. But the fix is fleeting. As the film progresses, the subjects reveal the contradictions at the heart of their world. Southern advocates for traditional gender roles, but resents the misogyny and sexism of her peers. Cernovich warns that diversity is code for white genocide, but has an Iranian wife and biracial kids. Spencer swears hell lead the white-nationalist revolutionuntil its more comfortable for him to move home to live with his wealthy mother in Montana. For so many who feel lost or alone, these avatars of hate offer a promise: Follow us, and life will be better.

White Noise shows how empty that promise is.

Toward the end of my reporting, my family traveled to Kielce, Poland, with my sole surviving grandmother, Nina Gottlieb, to retrace her steps fleeing the Nazis. They had signs: Jews and dogs are not allowed, she told us, as we gathered near her childhood home. My grandmother spent the war hiding under a Polish Catholic name, Janina Winiewski, until she was eventually resettled by HIAS, the Jewish refugee resettlement organization targeted by the white nationalist who murdered 11 people as they worshipped at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. Were all born innocent babies. What happens to us? my grandmother asked.

Continued here:
Four Years Embedded With the Alt-Right - The Atlantic

Just because a stopped clock is right twice a day is no reason not to fix or replace the clock.

Theres this tendency, particularly on the left side of the American political spectrum, to want to be liked by everyone. The ability to win over all sides might be worthwhile in a presidential politician in a country of 300 million people, but for average folks its usually just a symptom of wishy-washiness and fence-sitting. Having bigots agree with you, even if its just about the weather, is not a virtue in and of itself. It might just mean its raining today.

Or it might be an infiltration tactic. The alt-right and other reactionary conservatives saw exactly how social media operations could propel their chosen candidate into the White House in 2016, and there is no reason they will not try it again. An innocent Facebook share might very well be a part of this plan.

That may sound paranoid, but its been standard operating procedure for the alt-right for quite a while. In 2017, Ashley Feinberg at Huffington Post got a hold of the style guide for the Daily Stormer , a famous neo-Nazi website. Included in that document was the following passage:

Cultural references and attachment to entertainment culture to Nazi concepts have the psychological purpose of removing it from the void of weirdness that it would naturally exist in, due to the way it has been dealt with by the culture thus far, and making it a part of the readers world. Through this method we are also able to use the existing culture to transmit our own ideas and agendas.

The alt-right knows that its concepts are unpalatable for the average person, which is exactly why noted white nationalist Richard Spencer coined the term in the first place. To counteract most peoples poor reaction to being aligned with racist groups, the alt-right employs two social media tactics intended to mainstream their reach. Ive seen both of these happen in my sphere over the last month as tensions rise during the protests against brutal brutality.

The first is simple expansion of existing pages. You might have noticed an uptick in anti-bullying videos in your feed lately. Framed in that manner, its easy to miss the fact that in a lot of the videos the assailants are black and the victims are white. Even when pages actively put anti-Black Lives Matter messages in their posts, the sharers see only the violence in the video and share their visceral reaction. This is also a favorite tactic of groups like Patriot Prayer, who use contextless videos of violence at their rallies as recruitment tools, and its employed by police to condition members of the force to be ready to kill quickly.

The purpose of these videos is not to highlight bullying, but to reframe the current national conversation about violence as either something that happens equally or is actually being perpetuated more by black people and leftists. Just look at the video! People, especially those who are made uncomfortable about Black Lives Matter, end up sharing them based on that without looking to see if the page they are sharing from is dedicated to white supremacy or other alt-right ideals.

If even one person from that share clicks "like" then the page is ahead of the game, all because the sharer wanted to take a stand against bullying. What is often framed as a non-racial, colorless issue is most definitely the subversive work of pages looking for audiences willing to listen to them so long as they frame their rhetoric in a way that on the surface is non-racist. But dont be fooled: they want you to keep coming back to them and slowly begin acclimating to their ideals based on the goodwill you once artificially shared over their stance on bullying.

The second tactic is infiltration. You see it most often in fandoms, particularly after content creatorsdo something politically correct like introduce a black stormtrooper or female Doctor Who. Ian Danskins video How to Radicalize a Normie" goes into greater detail on why this works, but the gist is that the alt-right will take over an online community dedicated to another purpose, begin using bigotry ironically while also launching a campaign against social justice warriors and their political agenda, drive out everyone who finds the new paradigm toxic, and collect the remaining members like Pokemon now that they have an echo chamber. This tactic can be brutally effective, and only a few very dedicated and self-aware communities like furries have adequately combated it.

Believe it or not, this tactic even works with overtly leftist political spaces. The nomination of Joe Biden (and before him Hillary Clinton) pissed off a lot of leftists, and they are happy to point as much as their anger about that at the nominee as they can. Well, no one has a longer list of why you should hate the Democratic Party nominee than the alt-right, and thats why suddenly I saw a lot of leftists groups sharing this Charlie Kirk tweet.

Five minutes on his Twitter profile show that Kirk is an actively harmful media presence when it comes to black civil rights. His tweets since this are full of anti-Black Lives Matter rhetoric. Whatever good point he made in his tweet is entirely in service to getting people to hate Joe Biden.

There is no reason to ever listen to Charlie Kirk about civil rights unless youre looking for a bad example. Its not like you cant easily find liberal black voices criticizing Biden harshly. Why elevate a man with a long history of anti-leftist propaganda instead of them?

Because white racists are very good at saying what white anti-racists want to hear in order to appeal to their desire for fair play and a sense that the good white people are really all in this together deep down. Whether you agree with Kirks opinion that Biden is bad for black Americans is up to you, but what is inarguable is the fact that leftists boosting Kirks voice undoubtedly makes a very unreasonable man seem reasonable to more people. Thats especially dangerous considering how many progressive spaces are bad at dealing with their own white supremacy. Which is a fine outcome for the alt-right because they would prefer that we didnt.

All of this is part of the plan to get access to your followers, even if you personally don't come along for the ride. The alt-right is far smaller than it appears, but they are incredible at roping in patsies to do their work for them. Their primary recruitment tool in 2020 is not the Hate Rally, but the decentralized mass of social media. Every time they get someone nodding along with them, its a foot in the door. Know who youre sharing and what they want from your share. Please think responsibly because they are very much counting on anxious white people doing that as little as possible.

Jef Rouner is a contributing writer who covers politics, pop culture, social justice, video games, and online behavior. He is often a professional annoyance to the ignorant and hurtful.

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Don't Share Content From the Alt-Right - Houston Press