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James Verini at the Daily Beast notices something we've been tracking here at C&L too: Neo-Nazis and far-right extremists are not only recruiting more openly, they're being much more public in their full-on expressions of racism, nativism, and xenophobia. Unlike David Duke, these characters aren't even trying to hide it:

A year after President Obama's election, hate groups are feeling bolder than they have in over a decade, and their usually insular anger is beginning to spill into the public realm. This weekend, the National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi organization, held rallies in Arizona and Minnesota. Those demonstrations came on the heels of similar actions in Southern California, where epithet-spewing white supremacists were forced to disband by rock-throwing counter-protesters. The upsurge in visibility is more than anecdotal—law-enforcement officials are monitoring levels of agitation among extremist groups that they say are the highest since Timothy McVeigh’s deadly attack in Oklahoma City nearly 15 years ago.

The outcries of right-wing tea-partiers, death panellers, birthers, and the like are accompanied by increased activity all along the paranoid fringe.

“It’s sort of a beehive now,” says James Cavanaugh, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Cavanaugh was one of the agents at the standoff at David Koresh’s Waco, Texas, compound in 1993 (which McVeigh timed his terrorist act to commemorate, two years later, on April 19, 1995). Last October in Tennessee, Cavanaugh aided in the arrest of two white supremacists charged with plotting to assassinate Obama, and in 2007 he helped bring down members of the Alabama Free Militia, who were found with hundreds of hand- and rifle grenades and other explosives. The arrests had an unsettling familiarity. “We haven’t had that kind of activity since the 1990s,” Cavanaugh says.

“We believe there is a real resurgence,” adds Lieutenant David Hall, director of the Missouri Information Analysis Center, which tracks antigovernment extremist groups around the Midwest. “The atmosphere is ripe.”

That was obvious to anyone who was in downtown Phoenix, Arizona, this past weekend:

The Arizona Republic reports that, as is so often the case, the anti-Nazis outnumbered the actual Nazis by about 10-to-1:

Members of the National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi group based out of Detroit, were met with a greater number of protesters.

Phoenix police kept the groups apart, as members from both sides shouted insults at each other.

Jeff Schoep, a NSM leader, said his group was standing in defense of America.

J.T Ready of Mesa also spoke at the America First Rally. He said the group was defending his country against invaders.

After about an hour, the neo-Nazis left the capitol to march down Jefferson Avenue before getting into their cars at 12th Avenue.

Andy Hernandez of Phoenix said he was surprised at the different types of people who showed up to protest the neo-Nazis.

"There's all kinds of people, from different races and colors," Hernandez said. "We represent America. We didn't shut them down, but we gave them a counter protest. We just oppose what Nazi represents."

Ironically, that was just what Ready himself whined to a reporter for Phoenix's Fox station in the video above:

Reporter: Do you consider yourself a National Socialist?

Ready: National Socialist? I am.

Reporter: Weren't Nazis considered National Socialists?

Ready: Well, there's a term that starts with an 'N' for calling black people too, uh, so I think that the 'N' term for National Socialists, calling them Nazis, is the same thing.

*Sniff* Gosh, we all should bow our heads in shame for having referenced National Socialists derogatorily. Lord knows they don't deserve it.

Anyway, it's true that the German National Socialists never called themselves "Nazis" because it was a indeed thought to be a derogatory term. On the other hand, American Nazis like George Lincoln Rockwell have always embraced the word. Why should anyone stop calling them what they plainly are?

[H/t Scarce.]

Continue reading »

I see, via Pam Spaulding, that David Duke is all worked up about the GOP selecting Michael Steele, a black man, as the party chair:

GOP traitors appoint Obama Junior as Chairman of the Republican Party
I am glad these traitorous leaders of the Republican Party appointed this Black racist, affirmative action advocate to the head of the Republican party because this will lead to a huge revolt among the Republican base. As a former Republican official, I can tell you that millions of rank-and-file Republicans are mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore! We will either take the Republican Party back over the next four years or we will say, "To Hell With the Republican Party!" And we will take 90 percent of Republicans with us into a New Party that will take its current place!

I think the insanity of nominating "Mr. Amnesty" John McCain and now this Black racist - will lead to insurgency in the Republican ranks, and a lot of dissidents getting elected in Republican Party primaries around the country. This will result over the next four years a real move by millions of Republicans to take the party back to the populist issues that are not only right but can win for the Republican Party. We must end affirmative action, protect our gun rights and all our constitutional rights, have a moratorium on immigration, we must have protectionism, yes I said protect American businesses and their workers from NAFTA and GATT and the lie of free trade, and we must have America First, not foreign interventionism. Our boys should be home protecting the American borders a not being murdered on the borders of Iraq or Afghanistan. The time as come for Republican Party to stand up to Obama and defend American heritage, rights, and freedom!

...Let's make this abomination in the Republican Party, the last major party of White redoubt, as a rallying cry of resistance!

Well, Duke's predictive powers on these matters has never been very good (the Great White Awakening has been Just Around the Corner for many many years now).

To tell the truth, all this gnashing of neo-Nazi teeth reminds me of 2000, when Pat Buchanan, then running as the Reform Party candidate, named Ezola Foster his running mate -- at which Duke, along with Stormfront chief Don Black and WCOTC Pontifex Maximus Matthew Hale and just about every other white supremacist in the country, publicly switched his support to George W. Bush.

Now, it would be nice to imagine somehow that the GOP has indeed finally crawled out from under the shadow of the Southern Strategy and has left the fading cadre of racists in this country with no major party to call home. But I doubt it. No doubt the good ol' boys in places like South Carolina are sore at the Republican party right now, but I doubt that they're going to give up that easily. They sure as hell aren't just going away.

And in the face of that reality, it doesn't seem likely that Michael Steele is going to be the man who brings that change to the GOP. He gives them a nice Sidney Poitier-esque figurehead, but consider his real-life record (via Judd Legum) when it comes to such ethical matters -- especially those cases where racism raised its head:

-- Steele bused in homeless African Americans from Philadelphia to distribute literature in inner-city Baltimore that featured a “Sample Democratic Ballot” with votes for Steele and former Gov. Bob Ehrlich, along with photos of prominent black Democrats.

-- Steele defended former Gov. Bob Ehrlich’s decision to hold a $100,000 fundraiser at a country club that did not allow non-white members, saying that the club’s membership’s policies were “not an issue” because “I don’t play golf.”

I'm sure Duke is squawking because of the symbolic nature of Steele's selection. But the great likelihood is that's all it will be.

On Tuesday's "O'Reilly Factor," BillO went after DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas for having the audacity to run a site where people are free to write posts like this one, in which dKos member Mahler3 <gasp> juxtaposed photos from Jenna Bush's wedding with graphic pictures from Iraq. This was not a recommended diary, by the way, and was almost universally panned in the comments section.

Download | play Download | play (h/t Bill W)

Transcript via MediaMatters:

O'Reilly: And Newsweek magazine, by the way, has legitimized him by giving him a columnist position. I talked to the editor by email, and I said I can't believe that you're -- that's like hiring David Duke. Again, I use Duke too much, but I have to -- the level of hatred coming out of that website is unprecedented. Isn't it?

Markos responds here with some friendly and hate-free emails he got from O'Reilly viewers.

C&L'er Bill W writes:

Somehow Newsweek shouldn't have hired Kos because of what other people say in the comments or post in their user blogs, but of course he's okay with their hiring Rove who has been involved in scandal after scandal. Who's more like David Duke? Kos, or the guy behind the robocalls that said McCain had an illegitimate black child? I'm just sayin'.