Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by DrEvil » Mon Aug 05, 2019 7:55 pm
by The Consul » Tue Aug 06, 2019 12:05 am
by seemslikeadream » Tue Aug 06, 2019 5:58 am
How A Right-Wing Conspiracy Site Seized On Bogus Info About The El Paso Shooter
Screenshot/YouTube, Reboot Congress
By Matt Shuham
August 5, 2019 12:50 pm
In the hours after a mass shooting Saturday, a right-wing conspiracy website used bogus “evidence” from a reputation management website to spread misinformation about the accused gunman.
After initial reports identified Patrick Crusius as the alleged gunman behind the the El Paso Walmart massacre that left 22 people dead and more wounded, Jim Hoft, founder of the right-wing conspiracy website The Gateway Pundit, presented an inaccurate picture of Crusius to his readers.
Selectively plucking information from the reputation management website MyLife, which can be edited anonymously by anyone, Hoft (pictured above) set about reporting that the gunman was really a Democrat, and that “Leftists” on the web were editing the gunman’s MyLife profile in real time. Here’s his headline from Saturday:
An archived version of The Gateway Pundit’s article on Saturday.
But Hoft’s post left out crucial information. For one thing, it asserted that the gunman’s “original” profile on MyLife “said he was a registered Democrat.”
However, earlier archived versions of the profile do not list any party affiliation. Here’s the first version of the profile saved on the Internet Archive on Saturday.
An archived version of MyLife profile for the gunman on Saturday.
A few minutes later, as the shooting became national news and after edits were made to the gunman’s page, the MyLife profile said the gunman was “currently a registered Democrat Party; ethnicity is Antifa; and religious views are listed as Antifa.”
A later archived version of MyLife profile for the gunman on Saturday.
Someone had apparently edited the page to identify the gunman as a Democrat — only after he was identified as the gunman.
Hoft cited yet another edited version of the MyLife profile, which identified the gunman as a Democrat and his religion as Christian, as the “original” version of the page.
The Gateway Pundit referred to this edited version of the MyLife page as the gunman’s “original profile at 2:46.”
Within minutes, Hoft reported, the profile had been changed to identify the gunman as a Republican. “Leftists changed” it, Hoft claimed.
The Gateway Pundit used this, yet another edited version of the gunman’s MyLife page, to assert that “leftists changed his political affiliation.”
The conspiracy website, which was given temporary White House press credentials early in the Trump administration, did stumble upon an obvious truth about MyLife: It’s easily edited and thus not a reliable source of biographical information. And yet, for whatever reason, Hoft assumed he had witnessed to a left-wing conspiracy.
Only later, as the MyLife page was edited over and over again, did Hoft add an update — albeit with more unproven claims.“UPDATE— The MyLife page was created AFTER the El Paso shooting. Democrats then jumped in and changed it to make it look like he was a Republican.
In addition to it being unclear who edited the page and for what reason, it’s also unclear whether the profile itself was first created before or after the shooting. What is confirmed by archived versions of the page is that, initially on Saturday, it did not contain information about the gunman’s party affiliation or religious beliefs.
That material only appeared after Crusius’ name was connected to the massacre in El Paso — when his digital footprint was a battleground of misinformation.
Subsequent archived versions show that battle in realtime. One version, from Sunday morning, reads: “HELLO I AM EDITING YOUR INTERNET. Get off of this webpage and find a reputable source.”
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/righ ... so-shooter
Steve Bannon organised a 'We Build the Wall' event in El Paso just days before @BBCJonSopel's interview. Also note the El Paso shooter who killed 20 followed this event and supported 'We Build the Wall'
https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla?ref_ ... r%5Eauthor
Bannon Kicks off Border Wall Symposium in El Paso
Private citizens are building the wall on the US-Mexico border.
ByHuman EventsonJuly 26, 2019
Tweet Reddit Whatsapp Email Share Share Print
NEW MEXICO – Former Trump campaign CEO and White House Chief Strategist Stephen K. Bannon kicked off the Symposium At The Wall this morning at the New Mexico-Mexico-Texas border on Friday morning.
Hundreds of attendees and pro-Trump Instagram influencers descended on the U.S. border for three days of speeches, fundraising, and panel discussions about border security and the privately funded wall built following the fundraising efforts of Brian Kolfage and the We Build the Wall project.
We Build The Wall have so far built a 25-foot-high steel wall on private land that stretches for half a mile.
“This is a citizen-led movement,” said Bannon in his opening remarks, hinting at big-name keynote speakers due to join the event later in the day.
The speaker list includes panelists from Numbers USA, as well as Kris Kobach, Michelle Malkin, David Bossie, Corey Lewandowski, Sheriff Clarke, Mike Cernovich, Raheem Kassam, Congressman Louie Gohmert, General Spalding, Candace Owen, and more.
“This is the first privately constructed border wall on the national border in U.S. history. That in and of itself is an amazing accomplishment, and it’s not going to be the last,” said Kris Kobach.
We Build The Wall have so far built a 25-foot-high steel wall on private land that stretches for half a mile. The plan, Human Events understands, is to continue down the same path and meet the government wall 21 miles down the road.
Border agents have estimated this stretch of land can see up to 100 illegal immigrants crossing the border over the course of just one night. Around $100,000 of illicit drugs are also said to have crossed the border in a single night.
“We’re closing a gap that’s been a big headache for them,” said Kobach, the former Kansas Secretary of State.
Human Events will be providing live coverage from the border over the course of the event.
One America News will also be covering the event, which is live-streamed on the We Build the Wall Inc. Facebook page.
https://humanevents.com/2019/07/26/bann ... oogle.com/
Republicans Fear ‘Extinction in the Suburbs’ Over Gun Control
Sahil KapurAugust 6, 2019, 3:00 AM CDT
After two gruesome mass shootings in a 24-hour span, some Republicans are raising alarms that their opposition to new firearm limits is making the party toxic to the suburban women and college graduates who will shape the 2020 election.
“Republicans are headed for extinction in the suburbs if they don’t distance themselves from the NRA. The GOP needs to put forth solutions to help eradicate the gun violence epidemic,” said Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor and oil-and-gas executive who supports President Donald Trump.
Last year, Eberhart said, he was having lunch with Rick Scott when the then-Florida governor learned of the massacre unfolding in Parkland. It marked the deadliest high school shooting in U.S. history, as a gunman used an AR-15-style rifle to kill 17 people. Eighteen months later, as the country reels from killing sprees in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, Eberhart said it’s time to join Democrats and majorities of Americans who want to ban those types of guns.
“The GOP needs to make several moves such as universal background checks, eliminating loopholes and banning military-style assault weapons to neutralize the issue,” he said. “Otherwise, Republicans will lose suburban voters just like they did in the midterms on health care.”
While most Republicans have opposed expanding background checks and banning assault-rifles, GOP Senator Lindsey Graham said Monday he cut a deal with Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal on “red flag” legislation to assist and encourage states to keep guns away from people who are found to pose an imminent risk of violence. Many Democrats said that wasn’t enough and called for a renewal of the assault-weapons ban and universal background checks, among other measures.
The 2018 election reflected a changing landscape on guns. Republicans were swept out of the House majority after losing suburban bastions where they were once dominant — in places like Orange County, California, and around Dallas and Houston in Texas. Voters in 2018 favored stricter gun control by a margin of 22 percentage points, and those who did backed Democrats by a margin of 76% to 22%, according to exit polls. Gun policy ranked as the No. 4 concern, and voters who cited it as their top issue voted Democrat by a margin of 70% to 29%.
There have been 255 mass shootings so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which counts incidents where at least four people were shot or killed, not including the shooter. With the presidential election 15 months away, it’s unclear just how salient the issue of guns will be in shaping voter behavior.
GOP ‘Takes a Hit’
The renewed debate captures a dilemma for Trump as he revs up his reelection campaign with appeals to rural Americans steeped in a rich gun culture. But he risks alienating upper-income suburbanites, who can make or break his prospects, if he’s seen as unwilling to take action to stop frequent mass shootings.
All of the major Democratic candidates are running on gun control measures, including tougher background checks and banning assault weapons, setting up a stark contrast with Trump.
“Every time the country experiences a tragedy of this nature the Republican brand takes a hit,” said Carlos Curbelo, a Republican former congressman who lost to a Democrat his suburban Miami-area district in 2018. “Because many, many Americans perceive that Republicans are unwilling to act on gun reform, due to the influence of the NRA and other organizations.”
“Certainly in swing suburban districts there is broad support for” policies like universal background checks and 72-hour waiting periods, Curbelo said. “A lot of voters, especially young voters, have lost their patience with this issue.”
A Marist poll last month, commissioned by NPR and PBS, found that 57% of American adults support banning “the sale of semi-automatic assault guns such as the AK-47 or the AR-15,” while 41% oppose it. Support for such bans was 62% among suburbanites, 74% among women in the suburbs and small cities, and 65% among white college graduates.
But the survey found broad opposition to banning semi-automatic assault weapons among the core elements of Trump’s coalition — 67% among Republicans, 67% among conservatives, 65% among white men without college degrees, and 51% among rural Americans.
Gun Voters
The party’s longstanding opposition to gun control is a product of party leaders working to consolidate single-issue firearm owners voters who reliably turn out in elections and tend to view any new restrictions as a threat to their Second Amendment rights.
It explains why most Republicans oppose even modest measures like universal background checks, which received 89% national support in the Marist poll, including large majorities across all demographic and party affiliations. The NRA opposes that proposal, too.
“The NRA is committed to the safe and lawful use of firearms by those exercising their Second Amendment freedoms,” the NRA said in a statement Sunday, adding that it “will not participate in the politicizing of these tragedies” but will work to pursue practical solutions.
Earlier this year, eight House Republicans from suburban or competitive districts voted with Democrats to pass a bill that would impose background checks on buyers for gun sales considered private, which are not currently required by federal law.
But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, has refused to consider the bill, and Trump has threatened to veto it.
In a statement Monday, Trump denounced the “twisted” killers over the weekend and called for new “red flag” laws to keep firearms away from people found to be dangerous. He blamed the internet, social media and violent video games for pushing people toward violence, though he suggested easy access to guns wasn’t the problem.
“Mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger, not the gun,” he said.
Gun politics have shifted since President Barack Obama avoided the issue in his 2008 and 2012 campaigns for fear that it was a political loser. During Obama’s first term, the country was evenly divided on whether gun laws should be made stricter or stay the same, according to Gallup. By October 2018, support for stricter firearm laws outnumbered support for maintaining them by 31 points.
Background Checks
The shift was propelled by the Newtown elementary school massacre in December 2012, after which Senate Democratic leaders attempted to pass a bipartisan bill to require universal background checks, but were thwarted by a coalition of mostly Republicans.
US-CRIME-SCHOOL-SHOOTING
Makeshift memorial for the victims of the Newtown elementary school shooting.
Photographer: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, the Republican co-author of the bill, said Monday he spoke with Trump and urged him to support the measure, adding that the president expressed openness to work on background check legislation.
Toomey said he hoped that “the accumulated pain from so many of these horrific experiences will be motivation to do something.”
“I hope we’re at a moment where the atmosphere has changed,” Toomey told reporters.
Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, the party’s 2012 presidential nominee, signaled openness to new gun laws on Sunday and said he wants to be a “constructive voice” in the debate.
“These issues involve constitutional rights and deeply held beliefs – but that is not an excuse to shy away from a serious, fact-based, and thorough national discussion which will potentially lead to remedial legislation,” he said.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... un-control
by seemslikeadream » Tue Aug 06, 2019 4:14 pm
Wombaticus Rex » Mon Aug 05, 2019 9:53 am wrote:Except slavery didn't end, of course -- and schools still aren't integrated enough for liberals, which is why mandatory bussing is a topic in 2019 debates more than 40 years after Boston's experiment started.
The moral arc of history is a bit of a myth. Social programming by unaccountable self-appointed elites is not.
Two shootings in one day, two shooters with very different motivations. I don't expect to hear much about Dayton this week, and I expect to hear a great deal about El Paso. That's programming, too.
by Karmamatterz » Tue Aug 06, 2019 5:34 pm
Question 1: How many women have mental health issues?
by seemslikeadream » Tue Aug 06, 2019 5:46 pm
by Karmamatterz » Tue Aug 06, 2019 5:58 pm
by seemslikeadream » Tue Aug 06, 2019 7:27 pm
A Reformed White Nationalist Says the Worst Is Yet to Come
Christian Picciolini discusses the mainstreaming of white nationalism, what it takes to de-radicalize far-right extremists, and why the problem is metastasizing.
Yara BayoumyKathy Gilsinan8:00 AM ET
Christian Picciolini, a former violent extremist, joined a neo-Nazi movement 30 years ago. Now he tries to get people out of them.Courtesy of Christian Picciolini
It’s going to get worse.
That’s the warning of a former violent extremist, Christian Picciolini, who joined a neo-Nazi movement 30 years ago and now tries to get people out of them. White-supremacist terrorists—the ones who have left dozens dead in attacks in Pittsburgh, New Zealand, and El Paso, Texas, in recent months—aren’t just trying to outdo one another, he told us. They’re trying to outdo Timothy McVeigh, the anti-government terrorist who blew up an Oklahoma City federal building and killed more than 100 people in 1995—the worst terrorist attack in the United States before September 11, 2001.
Read: How white-supremacist violence echoes other forms of terrorism
On Saturday morning in El Paso, a gunman shot and killed 22 people, including children, at a Walmart. The store was crowded for back-to-school-shopping season. The victims included a high-school student, an elementary-school teacher, and a couple carrying their infant son, who survived. And the shooter, according to an online manifesto authorities attributed to the suspect, saw himself fighting a “Hispanic invasion” as he gunned them down.
That shooting, along with another one hours later, in which an attacker killed nine people over 30 seconds in Dayton, Ohio, renewed the clamor for gun-control laws that has become a grim ritual after such events. But Picciolini said that even if the U.S. could get a handle on its gun problem, terrorists can always find other ways. McVeigh had his car bomb, the September 11th hijackers had their airplanes, Islamic State attackers have suicide bombings, trucks, and knives. “I have to ask myself, Do we have white-nationalist airline pilots?” Picciolini said. “There have to be. I knew people in powerful positions, in politics, in law enforcement, who were secretly white nationalists. I think we’d be stupid and selfish to think that we don’t have those in the truck-driving industry.”
Picciolini now runs a global network, the Free Radicals Project, where former extremists like him provide counseling to others trying to leave extremist movements. He spoke with us yesterday morning about the mainstreaming of white nationalism, what it takes to de-radicalize far-right extremists, and why the problem is metastasizing.
A condensed and edited transcript of the conversation follows.
Read: How many attacks will it take until the white-supremacist threat is taken seriously?
Yara Bayoumy: What are your thoughts in the aftermath of El Paso?
Christian Picciolini: I’m as horrified as everyone else is. And frustrated, because this is something I’ve been banging the drum about for 20 years—that the escalation of violence would get worse. The [white-supremacist] ideology is spreading more into the mainstream than it ever has before. There aren’t checks and balances to counter it. There aren’t programs being funded to help people disengage from extremism. Some of the rhetoric coming from the very top is emboldening extremists.
Bayoumy: Talk to us about the evolution you’ve seen since you were in the movement 30 years ago—these views used to be on the fringe, and now are much more mainstream.
Picciolini: Unfortunately, I think that the underpinnings of the ideology have always been there. The extremists were on the fringe, and very visible, but other people weren’t willing to voice those beliefs. Thirty years ago, when I was in the movement, we were turning off the average American white racists who didn’t want to be so open and visible about those beliefs. So there was this effort to make it more mainstream, to grow the hair out, turn in the “boots for suits.” I never thought we would have a social and political climate that really kind of brought it to the foreground. Because it’s starting to seem less like a fringe ideology and more like a mainstream ideology.
Kathy Gilsinan: What role does the internet play? There’s a lot of discussion about internet radicalization for members of ISIS—is this a parallel process for white-supremacist movements, or are there differences?
Picciolini: It’s a very parallel process. The propaganda is very similar. The internet itself is a platform. Thirty years ago, marginalized, broken, angry young people had to be met face-to-face to get recruited into a movement. Nowadays, those millions and millions of young people are living most of their lives online if they don’t have real-world connections. And they’re finding a community online instead of in the real world, and having conversations about promoting violence.
Bayoumy: What about the shooter’s apparent anti-immigrant manifesto? Does anything in it strike you as surprising?
Picciolini: Unfortunately I’ve read every one of these things, since the first, in 2009, when James von Brunn walked into the D.C. Holocaust Museum and killed a guard [Stephen Johns]. He left a manifesto that had the same conspiracy theories, and much of the same language, that [we’ve seen] in other shootings up until this week—this whole idea of the “Great Replacement,” of “white genocide,” the belief that immigrants are going to overwhelm the white race. That, frankly, is a crock of shit. But we see things in the news that seem to kind of stand behind these notions—that border facilities are overwhelmed. Even though it’s not really a threat to anyone’s race. Migration has been happening for centuries, and we’re still here. Nations change over centuries, borders have been different. But that’s all the language white supremacists have been using for decades.
Bayoumy: What about the international connections between these movements?
Picciolini: There was always a connection overseas; these far-right movements shared the same names, the same leadership structure. Certainly the manifestos suggest that they’re playing off of each other; the El Paso shooter referenced support for the New Zealand shooter. It’s no longer a lone-wolf-type situation, which is something we were pushing in the ’80s and ’90s. The ideology then was that there were no leaders, there was no centralized movement, individuals were empowered to act on their own. But the internet has really solidified this movement globally through all these forums online; they’re connected in the virtual world in ways that we often can’t be in the real world. I would say that the threat of a transnational, global white-supremacist terrorist movement is spreading.
Bayoumy: How do they raise money?
Picciolini: Thirty years ago, music was the vehicle for that; you’d have touring white-supremacist metal bands, and groups would raise money off ticket sales. Nowadays, there’s a lot of crowdsourcing. These groups are generating revenue, for instance, through serving ads on some of their propaganda videos. If ads are being served on their videos, chances are good, depending on how many views, they’re making ad revenue based on Google, Facebook, YouTube, serving ads against their content. So, in that sense, de-platforming is good. It does slow them down quite a bit. From my perspective, it also makes people harder to reach. And a lot of times, it also emboldens them to get even more vile and vitriolic about what they’re doing, because they feel kind of like a caged animal. They play the victim narrative.
Bayoumy: What do you make of the president’s tweets Monday morning, in which he tried to connect gun background checks to immigration restrictions? [In later remarks on Monday, the president said: “In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry, and white supremacy. These sinister ideologies must be defeated.”]
Picciolini: Any tragedy that happens now is being politicized, so it doesn’t surprise me. He’s very good at kicking little buckets of gasoline over sparks of fire that already exist. Racism existed before he became president, and is now again at the fore. When he says those things, he is speaking to his base by not coming out strong for a very specific opinion, as after Charlottesville[, Virginia,] when he said there were good people on both sides. This is a little bit of a dilemma for me, because I also have to believe there are good people on both sides in order to do what I do.
Picciolini now runs a global network, Free Radicals, where former extremists like him provide counseling to others trying to leave extremist movements. (Photo by Dennis Sevilla; Courtesy of Christian Picciolini)
Bayoumy: That’s a good segue to get into your own story. How did you go through this evolution and find yourself on the other side of this? And since then, how have you been able to help people who are still in these groups? Have you noticed any change in the frequency of people who want to leave these movements but don’t know how?
Picciolini: I’ve seen the requests for help skyrocket since 2014. I was recruited when I was 14 years old, in 1987. My parents are Italian immigrants, and when they came over they struggled, had to work constantly, so I didn’t see them very much. But I grew up in a loving family. Still, I went searching for a sense of identity and community and purpose. I was standing in an alley, and a man came and recruited me. I spent eight years as part of America’s first neo-Nazi skinhead group. I didn’t have a foundation for racism; everything I wore as a suit of armor, I ended up believing, and certainly promoting and acting on. But the foundation of racism was never there for me. When I started to meet people that challenged what I believed about them, people that were black, brown, gay—they showed me compassion at a time in my life when I least deserved it. I’d kind of sealed myself off from the real world for eight years, and when I finally started to get peeks at what these people were really like, things changed.
I got out in 1996, and spent three years trying to self-reflect after disengaging, and trying to understand how and why I got there—really struggling with that, until around 2000, when I started … unofficially doing the work that I was doing. I was walking through a mall in Chicago, and still had tattoos on my arms from the old days, and a man walked up to me and said, “White power.” I was out at that point, so I sat and talked to him for a little while. And I don’t know what happened to that guy, but he seemed pretty amenable to the fact that I was leaving. And I hope he got out. But that was kind of my first unofficial intervention, 20 years ago, and I have been doing that ever since.
I don’t necessarily look for people. They find me. I do interviews, I have a TV show, I’ve published a memoir. Anytime people see an interview or a TED Talk, they reach out to me. Because there really is nobody else to turn to. If you have a heroin addiction, there are groups for that. If you’re being abused, there are groups to turn to for that. But unfortunately, if you’re struggling with these ideas of hate, there really is nobody else.
Bayoumy: What does disengagement look like? What’s a typical example of someone reaching out to you saying they want to leave? How do you help them through that?
Picciolini: It’s a whole lot of listening. I listen for what I call potholes: things that happen to us in our journey of life that detour us, things like trauma, abuse, mental illness, poverty, joblessness. Even privilege can be a pothole that detours us. As I listen to those—rather than debate or confront them about their ideology, but creating a rapport with them—I start to fill in those potholes. I will find resources in their community to help them deal with the trauma, with whatever it is that was the motivation for them to go in that direction. Nobody’s born racist; we all found it. Then I leverage the community around them to try to engage them and support them, and try to find ways for them to crawl out of that hole. Typically what I found is, people hate other people because they hate something very specifically about themselves, or are very angry about a situation within their own environment, and that is then projected onto other people. So I’m really trying to build resilience with people.
I’ll also do immersions to try to challenge their ideology—so I’ll introduce them to the people they think they hate once they’re ready, and challenge them in the same way I was challenged. It’s helped me disengage over 300 people over the years.
Bayoumy: What are some of the things that prompt these people to question their beliefs?
Picciolini: Certainly not facts. It’s very emotional. I try to take them through an emotional journey where they come to the conclusion that they’ve changed, and it’s not me telling them that they’ve changed. What I’ve found least effective is me telling them that they’re wrong, or me telling them that they need to think a certain way. Typically these people are pretty idealistic, although they’re lost, typically pretty bruised emotionally, and they have very low self-esteem.
Gilsinan: So it’s not effective to say, “Actually, immigration is often good for the economy.” Then what’s your answer instead?
Picciolini: I’ve always found it very difficult to sway opinion when it’s a group of people. When people are in a group, they tend to not be as vulnerable or as forthcoming. So I think it has to be a personal journey. But there has to be a way to sway a whole group of people, so facts are important—for most people, facts are still important. For folks in these movements, they have their own set of facts. Two plus two equals five, so you can’t argue that two plus two equals four, even though we know that that’s the case. You have to take them through situations where they challenge themselves.
I was working with a 31-year-old man in Buffalo, New York, several years ago, and he had been discharged from the military for an injury that he suffered during basic training and wasn’t able to deploy to Iraq at the time. And he saw all his friends go off to war and fighting for America, and he wasn’t racist going in, but he started going in that direction and became very much of an Islamophobe. When he came home, he started drinking and got really heavily involved in the white-power movement.
He got a copy of my book and he wasn’t very happy with [it], because I had left the movement and he was still very much in it. And after a couple of weeks of talking with him, I finally met him in person and asked him if he’d ever met a Muslim person before, and he said he didn’t want to; he thought that they were evil, the enemy, animals, whatever, insert word here. And when I flew out I had arranged, unbeknownst to him, a meeting with an imam at a local mosque. When I convinced him to go, we spoke with the imam, and then two hours later, it was as if these men had known each other their whole lives. The guy who I was working with was a Christian, and he learned that Jesus was part of the Koran, and Muslims revered him as a prophet—all these things that he never knew. They were both Chuck Norris fans; they bonded over that. We were crying at the end, and hugging.
And now they eat falafel together every chance they get.
But it’s not an easy process; it’s a very, very long process. If you think about quitting smoking, or drinking, or anything like that. For me, from the time I was 14 years old till I was 23, those were kind of the adult developmental years, so there were a lot of things that I had to unlearn.
Gilsinan: So what can the U.S. do on the policy front? What has your experience been like trying to work with the government on these issues? Are we equipped to deal with this?
Picciolini: I think we can be equipped. There’s just no will to build something about domestic extremism. We don’t currently have any hate-crime laws that apply to online activity, but photoshopping someone’s face onto an Auschwitz prisoner on Twitter isn’t so different from spray-painting a swastika in a synagogue. I think we need to start asking ourselves what kind of policies need to be in place, not to limit speech, but to protect people from it. I don’t know what the answer is there.
Gilsinan: What’s next?
Picciolini: I really think we need to get away from using the term lone wolves, because while they are single actors, they are part of a larger ecosystem. I just think it’s going to get worse before it gets better. They’re all trying to outdo each other, not just the last person, but Timothy McVeigh. Terrorists will always find another way to do it. I have to ask myself, Do we have white-nationalist airline pilots? There have to be. I knew people in powerful positions, in politics, in law enforcement, who were secretly white nationalists. I think we’d be stupid and selfish to think that we don’t have those in the truck-driving industry.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ni/595543/
We must call the El Paso shooting what it is: Trump-inspired terrorism
David SchanzerMon 5 Aug 2019 05.11 BST
It is staggering to imagine how much more violence this president may motivate if he continues down this deeply disturbing path
‘Trump’s rhetoric is infused with notions of violence and dehumanization’. Photograph: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images
Last year, when a rabid, anti-immigrant antisemite murdered 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue, I called it an act of domestic terrorism inspired by the ideology of Trumpism. The shooting took place during the height of the 2018 midterm campaign when Trump was inciting fear of an immigrant “caravan” from Central America. The shooter got the message. Hours before his bloody rampage, he accused a Jewish refugee support agency of bringing “invaders in that kill our people”.
Saturday in El Paso it was deja vu all over again.
Trump has launched his 2020 re-election campaign this summer by doubling down on the theme of racial and ethnic division and anti-immigrant hysteria. And as sure as the sun rises in the east, a mere month into this racially charged atmosphere, an extremist suspect fearful of Hispanics gaining political power in Texas decided to go kill as many Hispanics as possible at an El Paso Walmart. It is Trump-inspired terrorism yet again.
The president’s defenders have taken great offense to the notion that any of his actions or rhetoric have contributed to what happened in El Paso, but this defense is deeply flawed.
First, the assertion that Trump can be absolved of responsibility because he condemns violence by white supremacists reflects a misunderstanding of how homegrown domestic terrorism works.
It doesn’t require an overt appeal to violence to motivate an ideological extremist to engage in violence. Indeed, individuals often move from being a passive supporter of a cause to a mobilized killer when their political grievances are amplified, and their enemies are dehumanized.
So when Trump goes on Twitter and television calling migrants “invaders” and dehumanizes them by suggesting they are “infesting” America, he is motivating aggrieved individuals to take action into their own hands by using violence.
Second, the claim that Trump shares no blame for the shooting because he rejects the white supremacist ideology of the El Paso shooter is blatantly at odds with the facts. Indeed, the central political project of the Trump presidency has been reducing the political power of non-white people in America – a key tenet of white supremacist thinking.
Trump took action to reduce the number of minorities coming to America in the opening days of his administration when he halted immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries and temporarily suspended the refugee program. He has subsequently dramatically reduced the number of refugees admitted to the US each year and is threatening to drop the number to zero in 2020.
Trump’s demand that the census include a question about citizenship is also consistent with a white supremacist agenda. It is firmly established that such a question would suppress census participation by non-citizens and perhaps recent immigrants as well, thereby reducing the political power of the states where they reside.
Of course Trump’s notorious policy of separating children from their parents and detaining them in squalid conditions is part and parcel of the white supremacist desire to deter migration to the United States and dehumanize those who dare attempt to gain legal residency.
And, when Trump suggested last month that four members of Congress of color who were born or naturalized in the United States “came from” other countries, he ratified the core concept of white supremacy that non-white people are not truly “Americans”.
The manifesto the El Paso shooter posted online reflects that he understood and endorsed the president’s political program to a T. The attack, the shooter wrote was “in response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas”. Echoing the president’s logic that cruel conditions of confinement will deter migration, the shooter opined that his use of violence would provide a needed “incentive” for Hispanics to return to their home countries. His violent actions were necessary, he wrote, to save America from destruction.
Finally, while Trump does not overtly call for his supporters to use violence to further his agenda, his rhetoric is infused with notions of violence and dehumanization. The “send her back” chant Trump allowed to continue for 13 seconds at a campaign rally was an explicit call for the power of the state to be used to forcibly expatriate a foreign-born immigrant citizen. Last week he called a minority community in Baltimore a “rodent, rat-infested mess” – mixing images of urban minorities with inhuman pests and vermin.
These messages are not lost on people like the El Paso shooter: “Your president shares your view that immigrants and racial minorities are a scourge on America. They are not deserving of the privileges of citizenship and must be denied political power at all costs. They are animals anyway, so the use of violence is permissible.”
We remain 15 months from the 2020 election. It is staggering to imagine how much more violence this president may motivate if he continues down this deeply disturbing path.
David Schanzer is a professor at the Sanford School of Policy at Duke University and the director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... sm-el-paso
by seemslikeadream » Wed Aug 07, 2019 8:37 am
Gilroy festival shooter had a 'target list' with religious and political groups
(CNN) — The 19-year-old gunman who used an assault-style rifle to shoot people at the Gilroy Garlic Festival last week had a "target list" made up of religious institutions and political groups of both parties, as well as federal buildings and courthouses, authorities said.
Given the threats to nationwide organizations, the FBI is opening a domestic terrorist investigation into the shooting, FBI special agent in charge of the San Francisco office John Bennett said.
The FBI has not made a conclusion as to his motivation, and the shooter left no manifesto, Bennett said. The gunman was exploring violent, competing ideologies, and "there was nothing that was all one-sided or the other," he said.
The shooter, Santino William Legan, cut through a back fence to get into the food festival and began shooting at random with a weapon he bought in Nevada weeks earlier, authorities said.
Garlic Festival shooter died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police chief says
Three people -- 6-year-old Stephen Romero, 13-year-old Keyla Salazar and 25-year-old Trevor Irby -- were killed in the shooting, and more than a dozen people were wounded.
The gunman was shot multiple times by three responding police officers, and he then killed himself with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, Gilroy Police Chief Scot Smithee said last week.
In a search of his digital media, the FBI found a list of nationwide organizations that may have been potential targets. Those include religious, government and political organizations, including federal buildings, courthouses, and the food festival.
The gunman was wearing body armor when he fired 39 total rounds into the crowd, Smithee said. He had a 75-round drum magazine that fit into his weapon, and there were 71 rounds left in the drum when he died. In addition, he had two 40-round magazines on his body, two 40-round magazines on the ground, and one 40-round magazine that was on or near him, Smithee said.
A Remington shotgun was found in his vehicle, and his nearby backpack had two loose rounds, a rifle scope, flashlight, shovel and buckshot rounds for the shotgun.
An Instagram account bearing the shooter's name, created days before the shooting, posted two messages shortly before the attacks. One post was a photo of people walking around the Garlic Festival, and another post made a reference to a white supremacist text.
Law enforcement sources previously told CNN of finding extremist material in the shooter's Nevada apartment.
Family releases statement
7-year-old boy on shooting: I thought I was gonna die 00:56
Also on Tuesday, Legan's family released a statement through their attorney saying they were "deeply shocked and horrified" by his actions.
"We have never and would never condone the hateful thoughts and ideologies that led to this event, and it is impossible to reconcile this with the son we thought we knew," the family said. "Our son is gone, and we will forever have unanswered questions as to how or why any of this has happened."
They apologized to the families of the victims and said that every member of the family had cooperated with the investigation.
"To the City of Gilroy and to everyone affected, we are tremendously sorry. No words can begin to express this," the family said.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/06/us/gilro ... index.html
by Grizzly » Wed Aug 07, 2019 11:05 am
8chan's owner suggested the alleged gunman used an Instagram account to post the manifesto. But Instagram said the account hasn't been active in more than a year.
by stillrobertpaulsen » Wed Aug 07, 2019 4:05 pm
Belligerent Savant » Sat Aug 03, 2019 11:59 pm wrote:Per stillrobertpaulsen's news article above:She said she saw four men, dressed in black, moving together firing guns indiscriminately.
"Moving together". "Dressed in black".
Sounds very similar to active shooter training drills given to military and police depts, which include instructions to move together as a unit.
by stillrobertpaulsen » Wed Aug 07, 2019 4:20 pm
Wombaticus Rex » Sun Aug 04, 2019 6:16 pm wrote:
Although things only get dumber-er from here, there will always be the curious constant of odd, anomalous details popping out; like the creator of 8Chan casually admitting he let Federal law enforcement take the site over years ago, like the father of El Paso shooter Crusius being a dubious-ass "therapist" hypnoprogrammer with connections to Brazilian child abuse cults,
by liminalOyster » Wed Aug 07, 2019 5:10 pm
stillrobertpaulsen » Wed Aug 07, 2019 4:20 pm wrote:Wombaticus Rex » Sun Aug 04, 2019 6:16 pm wrote:
Although things only get dumber-er from here, there will always be the curious constant of odd, anomalous details popping out; like the creator of 8Chan casually admitting he let Federal law enforcement take the site over years ago, like the father of El Paso shooter Crusius being a dubious-ass "therapist" hypnoprogrammer with connections to Brazilian child abuse cults,
Hey Wombaticus, can you post some links to that? I just finished reading slad's OP on 8chan on the creator and didn't see anything there specifying that.
Dad of accused El Paso shooter is a licensed counselor who battled addiction
By Lia Eustachewich August 7, 2019 | 9:02am | Updated
The father of El Paso shooter Patrick Crusius is a licensed professional counselor who wrote a memoir about his nearly 40-year addiction to drugs and alcohol — and claims he once spoke with Jesus.
On his website, Bryan Crusius bills himself as a mental health expert whose “mission is to bring the highest level of care possible to any who wish to be free from addictions, codependence, PTSD and trauma.”
His practice, based in Richardson, Texas, involves accupuncture, sound and energy healing and meditation with “tones of quartz crystal bowls and isochronic beats.”
In the 2014 self-published book “Life Enthusiasm: A Path to Purpose Beyond Recovery,” Bryan opens up about how his struggles with addiction cost him his marriages to his first wife and Patrick’s mother, Lori.
The 63-year-old dad of four said he fell into drug addiction in his teens and moved on to abusing pills, including Vicodin and those prescribed for ADHD.
“I was always the one daring everyone else to go over the top in the partying category by taking the extreme amounts of whatever we had, whether Quaaludes, alcohol, magic mushrooms, or something else,” he wrote in the book, according to the Daily Mail.
In one passage, he also claims to have spoken with Jesus.
“Christ greeted me with a smile. He pulled his robe aside again with his right hand to reveal the flaming heart of love and compassion. He addressed me thus: ‘Bryan, you have chosen the Path of the Heart,'” he wrote.
Bryan once set up a GoFundMe page for a guitar teacher and friend, Eric Keyes, who was shot by a “mentally ill person” in Denton in 2012. Keyes survived.
“He does a lot of good work,” Keyes told the outlet.
Bryan and Lori split in 2011, when Patrick was 12 years old.
Bryan’s counseling license expires in February 2020, according to Texas Department of State Health Services records.
https://nypost.com/2019/08/07/dad-of-ac ... addiction/
Program Manager- Dual Diagnosis
Timberlawn Mental Health System
2008 – January 2010 2 years
This was definitely a hands-on position and of invaluable experience. Oversaw administrative duties, staffing, etc. Most enjoyable was the daily group therapies and Individual counseling. Introduced many patients to the Emotional Freedom Technique. It was a special honor to work with the Vietnam Veterans who touched my heart forever.
Timberlawn psychiatric hospital to close Feb. 16 after safety violations
FILED UNDERINVESTIGATIONS AT JAN 2018 SHARE
Print This Story
Default Profile ImageWritten by
Sue Ambrose Sarah Mervosh Miles Moffeit
Don't miss a story. Like us on Facebook.
Privacy Badger has replaced this Facebook Like button.
LIKE DALLAS NEWS' FACEBOOK PAGE
Editor's note: Timberlawn has announced that it will close and stop providing psychiatric services on Feb. 16. The story below was published Jan. 18.
Timberlawn psychiatric hospital says it is voluntarily closing its doors, just a week after state officials threatened to shut down the century-old treatment center because it was too dangerous for patients.
“Our intention to close Timberlawn comes after completing a comprehensive, careful review,” chief executive James Miller wrote Thursday in a letter to staff obtained by The Dallas Morning News.
He later issued a similar statement to The News, saying that the hospital’s owners had decided to shutter it in December, before the state threatened to yank its license and fine it $600,000. Timberlawn is appealing those sanctions.
It’s unclear exactly when the last patient will leave Timberlawn, which was once a premier mental health facility but in recent years has had safety problems, including sexual assaults.
An employee who answered the phone Thursday said the hospital was still accepting new patients.
Page 1 of Timberlawn Closure Letter 1 18 2018
Page 1 of Timberlawn Closure Letter 1 18 2018
Contributed to DocumentCloud by Sarah Mervosh of The Dallas Morning News • View document or read text
Miller told federal health officials that the hospital will close on Feb. 1, or as soon after that as possible, said Bob Moos, a Dallas spokesman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Timberlawn is responsible for transferring patients to other hospitals, according to Carrie Williams, spokeswoman for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.
Only 15 of the hospital's 144 beds are currently filled, she said.
Miller cited a decreased patient population as one reason for the hospital’s closure, along with the increasing availability of beds at other facilities and the cost to refurbish aging buildings on the Timberlawn campus, most of which are vacant.
He also said management is confident that Timberlawn has fixed its safety problems and now complies with federal regulations, though the results of the latest government inspection on Jan. 10 were not yet available.
As The News has detailed, children and adults trying to recover from trauma, depression or other mental conditions have gone to the hospital in East Dallas for help -- and found danger instead.
In 2014, a suicidal woman was left alone and killed herself. In 2015, a woman reported she was raped by another patient. And last fall, a 13-year-old girl who was a victim of past sexual abuse reported that a another teen patient came into her room one night and raped her.
The News does not typically name victims of sexual assault.
Inspectors found that on a night when there was just one mental health aide to watch 16 kids, the 17-year-old boy slipped into the girl’s room unnoticed. The two were placed in rooms next to each other, despite the fact that a doctor had warned the boy needed to be watched for sexual aggression.
At the time, the hospital was on probation with state health officials for its previous breakdowns in care.
The company that owns Timberlawn, Universal Health Services Inc., is the largest operator of mental health facilities in the country -- and is facing a slew of government investigations, including a federal criminal fraud probe. Since 2012, the company has closed two residential treatment centers for adolescents, in Virginia and Illinois, that faced regulatory sanctions.
Last August, Massachusetts regulators closed Westwood Lodge hospital after a long series of problems involving safety and patient care.
<p><span style="font-size: 1em; background-color: transparent;">Universal Health Services Inc., which owns Timberlawn, is facing a slew of government investigations, including a federal criminal fraud probe.</span></p>(Ashley Landis/Staff Photographer)
Universal Health Services Inc., which owns Timberlawn, is facing a slew of government investigations, including a federal criminal fraud probe. (Ashley Landis/Staff Photographer)
Universal Health owns at least five other mental health hospitals in North Texas, according to its website: Hickory Trail Hospital in DeSoto, Millwood Hospital in Arlington, University Behavioral Health of Denton; Mayhill Hospital, also in Denton; and Garland Behavioral Hospital.
A 2016 data analysis by The News found that of 154 Universal Health hospitals, more than a quarter were plagued by serious safety problems.
A spokeswoman for Universal Health did not respond to multiple requests for comment Thursday.
As Timberlawn's safety problems have worsened over the last three years, its role in the Dallas-area mental health network has faded. It had been one of the few hospitals to treat large numbers of children and teenagers, but other facilities with a broader range of medical services are now taking in more of those patients, Dallas mental health experts say.
"Timberlawn represented a century-and-a-half-old model of care that we really don't need,'' said Andy Keller, chief executive officer of the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute in Dallas.
The state oversees more than a dozen standalone psychiatric facilities in North Texas. Some general hospitals also have psychiatric units.
Colette Riel, whose sister committed suicide at Timberlawn in 2014, said she was glad that the hospital’s closure means no one else will get hurt at Timberlawn. Her sister, 37-year-old Brittney Bennetts, was known to be suicidal when staff left her alone; she hanged herself on doorknobs that the hospital knew posed a risk.
But Timberlawn’s closure is just “a drop in the bucket,” Riel said. “What about the parent company that owns all of these hospitals nationwide and their record and recklessness?”
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/investi ... e-can-shut
I have suffered from anxiety for many years of my life. There have been several medications my doctor has put me on but none of them really worked out for me because of the side effects. I didn't like the memory loss from Xanax and all the SSRI's that I have tried didn't work or made me too shaky.
I was referred to Bryan by a close friend of mine who also suffers from anxiety and had good results from energy therapy so I thought I'd try it out. I went to the clinic and was quickly led into a dark, tranquil room. The mood in the room was quite peaceful and as the treatment began I
felt relaxed. I must also add the rain and thunder sounds were quite relaxing. As my treatment started I fell into a deep relaxation. I imagined myself on a relative's patio while it was raining. I began to think about many aspects of my life, aspects in life that I could improve on. This relaxed state of mind got me past my anxiety disorder long enough to realize obvious ways I could improve upon my profession and social life in general. I also felt a tingling sensation in my legs and part of my head during parts of it. Before I knew it, Bryan woke me up and the treatment was over.
Not sure how or when I fell asleep but this energy treatment was helpful for my anxiety. I have never felt so relaxed and my mind was never so clear as it was right after. There is no doubt that I would recommend Bryan to anyone suffering from chronic anxiety!
http://www.dallasaddictionrecoverytherapy.com/
by liminalOyster » Wed Aug 07, 2019 5:29 pm
Eleven months before his son was arrested for allegedly murdering 20 people and injuring scores more with an assault rifle in El Paso, Texas, John Bryan Crusius started a GoFundMe page for a musician suffering the consequences of gun violence long after being shot by a stranger who appeared at his door.
The page included a photo of a critically wounded Eric Keyes lying on a hospital gurney. John Crusius wrote that Keyes had been struck by an “overwhelming series of traumatic events,” Crusius reported: “A mentally ill person showed up unannounced at Eric’s door in Denton, TX and told Eric he was a fan of his music. He pulled a gun and shot Eric from short range, the bullet piercing his chest and breaking three ribs, missing his heart by one millimeter, and finally lodged in his left arm. He suffered a collapsed lung (could not sing anymore) and nerve damage that extended to his left arm (could not play guitar).”
John Crusius does not say so in the posting, but he is a mental health counselor. The Veterans Administration had referred Keyes to Crusius’ clinic in Richardson, Texas for help with PTSD such as an ever growing number of American civilians suffer after being shot. Keyes needs only to hear a doorbell ring and he flashes back to the shooting. The gunman was later said by police to believe Keyes had sexually assaulted a woman eight years before. Keyes had been arrested for a sexual assault, but the charges had been dropped. Keyes only says that his assailant was deranged.
Cynics might wonder about the effectiveness of the “‘whole’ person: Body, Mind and Spirit” approach at John Crusius’ Infused Being Therapy and Sound Healing clinic. Keyes found him to be a true healer.
by seemslikeadream » Wed Aug 07, 2019 6:13 pm
The El Paso Screed, and the Racist Doctrine Behind It
From Pittsburgh to Christchurch, the men who have carried out deadly shootings cite the same fear: the replacement of white people.
Mourners gathered for a vigil to the victims of the shooting in El Paso on Saturday.CreditCreditCelia Talbot Tobin for The New York Times
By John Eligon
Aug 7, 2019
From Pittsburgh to Christchurch, and now El Paso, white men accused of carrying out deadly mass shootings have cited the same paranoid fear: the extinction of the white race.
The threat of the “great replacement,” or the idea that white people will be replaced by people of color, was cited directly in the four-page screed written by the man arrested in the killing of 22 people in El Paso over the weekend.
The phrase was coined in 2012 by the French author Renaud Camus, whose writing on white genocide echoes at least a century of white supremacist views. But some experts now fear the doctrine of replacement is being embraced more readily by lone wolf white terrorists and even some politicians, producing a particularly dangerous climate.
“These series of shootings all have an element of fear and anxiety created by this concept of being replaced,” said Oren Segal, the director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. “When you think your race is going to go extinct, you will do anything to protect that.”
Mr. Camus has sought to distance himself from white supremacists, writing in an email to The New York Times that nonviolence was central to his philosophy. Yet he did not shy away from saying he believed that people of white European descent were at risk of being wiped out by immigrants and people of color. If white supremacists held those views, “Good for them,” he wrote. “That is indeed my belief.”
The shooting in the immigrant-rich town of El Paso on Saturday was among the deadliest attacks in the United States motivated by white extremism since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people, according to the A.D.L. Nearly 75 percent of the extremist murders committed in the United States over the past decade were carried out by people espousing white supremacist ideology such as the great replacement, A.D.L. research shows.
Mr. Camus disputed his role in inspiring the accused El Paso gunman, whose screed, posted online minutes before the massacre, said the attack was the result of a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” Mr. Camus also denied influencing the man accused of killing 51 people in the mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, who wrote a document using the same title as Mr. Camus’s book, “The Great Replacement,” before the vicious attack was carried out.
ImageDuring a march in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, white supremacists yelled, “Jews will not replace us,” while carrying tiki torches.
During a march in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, white supremacists yelled, “Jews will not replace us,” while carrying tiki torches.CreditEdu Bayer for The New York Times
[“It feels like being hunted: The El Paso attack has left many Latinos deeply shaken, raising questions about their place in American society.]
Mr. Camus questioned whether either gunman could have read his book because it has not been translated into English, he said. The themes however have been repeated on far-right websites and by right-wing pundits.
Analysts say Mr. Camus’s writing — and the idea of a great replacement — has undoubtedly influenced the conversation among American white nationalists. The ideas espoused in the great replacement build on the most popular white supremacist talking point — the false notion that white people are at risk of genocide, said Heidi Beirich, the director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
That is a shift in the narrative from 20 years ago, she said, when white supremacists mostly talked about their superiority as a race. Now, their discussions center on a belief that they are the victims of nonwhite invasions, Ms. Beirich said.
“If you’re getting invaded, what do you need to do?” she asked, explaining the logic of white supremacists. “You need to repel the invaders.”
People who have that mind-set — fueled by the belief that violently defending the white race is not only heroic but rational — can be particularly lethal in this moment, experts said.
Ms. Beirich added that Mr. Camus’s writings lend an “academic veneer and sophisticatedness” to these racist views.
“White nationalism isn’t new, but what we need to recognize is that from Charlottesville to Pittsburgh to Poway to El Paso, these aren’t outliers on a scatter plot,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League. “These are data points on a trend line. And that’s a trend line that indicates clearly and unambiguously that white supremacy is a global threat.”
Image
The funeral for Joyce Fienberg, one of the 11 victims killed at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.CreditHilary Swift for The New York Times
Replacement theory also perpetuates the false and anti-Semitic view that the end of the white race is part of a Jewish conspiracy.
During a march in Charlottesville two summers ago, white supremacists yelled, “Jews will not replace us,” while carrying tiki torches. The following day, one of them killed a woman when he rammed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters.
In April, a gunman entered a synagogue in Poway, Calif., and began shooting. Authorities believe the gunman posted a manifesto riddled with anti-Semitic, racist slurs before the attack. Like the El Paso document, the screed declared support for the shooting in Christchurch and warned of the great replacement.
“It is the conspiracy theory du jour that they use to make sense of the world and justify their racist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic worldview,” Mr. Greenblatt said.
Representative Steve King of Iowa espoused replacement-theory talking points in an interview with a far-right Austrian publication last year. President Trump has repeatedly referred to an “invasion” of migrants into the country. And his idea for a border wall is the kind of thing that excites replacement-theory adherents, said Jeff Schoep, a former leader of a neo-Nazi organization.
“It’s probably one of the greatest fears that people in the movement have, is basically being replaced,” said Mr. Schoep, who says he now denounces white supremacist views.
Mr. Camus’s philosophy aligns lock-step with a tradition of white supremacist ideology that dates to Madison Grant, “the most influential racist in American history,” said Jonathan Spiro, a historian who is the chief academic officer at Castleton University.
Grant’s 1916 book, “The Passing of the Great Race,” argued that Nordics were the master race and lamented the threat posed by people who were not white. His book was a basis for the Immigration Act of 1924 that mostly limited immigration into the United States to people from Western Europe, and it inspired Adolf Hitler, who used the book as a manual for his eugenic practices, said Dr. Spiro, who wrote a biography of Grant.
Image
Mourners attend a vigil for Lori Kaye, who was killed in Poway, Calif.CreditHilary Swift for The New York Times
Mr. Camus’s theory of the great replacement shares the same ideas found in Grant’s book, Dr. Spiro said.
Mr. Schoep, who is in his 40s and was the head of the National Socialist Movement, joined the white nationalist movement as a teenager. In his mind at the time, it was not about hate, he said.
“I was joining something to save my country, to save my race, to save my people,” Mr. Schoep said. “Now I feel like that talk and some of that hate is coming to a head where it’s more violent, more pronounced and people are doing terrible things.”
That rising violence, as well as experiences he has had with people of other races, led Mr. Schoep to leave the movement this past winter, he said. He now disavows white supremacist beliefs, and he hopes that he can steer other white supremacists away from the movement, he said, adding that it will not be easy.
The sense of grievance among white nationalists remains deep, and many still feel marginalized, which leads to more attacks, Mr. Schoep said.
What happened in El Paso “is exactly the type of thing that concerns me and worries me for the future,” he said. “And I don’t think it’s going to be the last one.”
For Ibram X. Kendi, a historian and director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University, that might be true, but it is not necessarily surprising.
“The United States has always been in the midst of a white nationalist terrorist crisis,” said Mr. Kendi.
http://archive.is/26hnB#selection-243.0-660.0
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 4 guests
Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group
Site design by Likely Arts based on "Deluxe" by Artodia.
