GOP twists hearing on white nationalism away from topic

Sorry, Republicans, but your defense of white nationalism isn't becoming for the GOP

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Conservatie activistCandace Owens and Rep. Ted Lieu

If there is anything we learned about white nationalism from the House Judiciary Committee's hearing, it's that some conservative members of Congress have become defenders of white nationalism.

Instead of a hearing on white nationalism, the Tuesday hearing turned into a tit-for-tat as conservatives maneuvered the discussion about zioni,  antifa attacks against Mis;o, vocto,s pf jate.

“The fact that Dr. Abu-Salha who had lost two of his daughters and his son-in-law, and then for two of the three questions to be about whether your kids were taught to hate as Muslims — for that to happen is so traumatizing,” said Darakshan Raja of the Justice for Muslims Collective. “This was supposed to be about white nationalism and hate, and it ended up being not about that at all. It ended up being about the people who were being targeted by hate violence the most.”

Muslim Americans were a favorite target. During the heaering, Mort Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America and a staunch Trump supporter, proceeded to lecture Abu-Salha about Islam. “I am confused when the good doctor says that Islam does not promote hatred of Jews,” Klein said. “We need to have Muslims step up.”

Klein, who previously refused to apologize for using the term “filthy arab,” also spent his moments on the soapbox railing against Rep. Ilhaan Omar, a Muslim congresswoman. He called her out by name at least three times.

“I was horrified to see Speaker Pelosi and Leader Hoyer defend Rep. Omar after her vicious anti-Semitic remarks,” Klein said. “That was unfair.” Klein also suggested that the white supremacist accused of murdering 50 Muslims at mosques in New Zealand was “left-wing.”

Many of the Republicans yielded their time to panelist Candace Owens, a conservative commentator in the mold of Ann Coulter: Make ridiculous statements with no evidence; the more ridiculous, the better.

It seemed that the Democrats were reluctant to attack Owens because she is black. They would be falling into a clever trap to prove her oft-quoted statement, "Democrats are racists.

In fact, when Rep Ted Lieu, D-CA, replayed a tape of Owns praising Hitler, she launched her trap: “I think it’s pretty apparent that Mr. Lieu believes that black people are stupid and will not pursue the full clip in its entirety. He purposefully presented an extracted clip,” she said, before committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) interrupted.

“What I think the hearing illustrated is just how deep the political divisions are: so deep that we can’t have unanimity about hate crimes and white nationalism,” said Brian Levin, a national expert in hate crimes who heads the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. 

“We’re on thin ice with all kinds of extremism — white nationalism in particular — and we missed a real opportunity to explore the risk,” he told Vox.

The hearings first heard from the tech companies, Google and Facebook and what they have done to remove hate speech and writings for their social media platforms.

As if to underscore the spervasiveness of the issue, YouTube shut down the comment section on its livestream of a congressional hearing on white nationalism Tuesday after the section filled with hateful comments, underscoring the problem lawmakers had gathered to discuss.

Many of the comments expressed anti-Semitic views or decried multicultural societies. Others expressed white pride.

Donald Trump for his part refuses to acknowledge that white nationalism is a rising terror threat, preferring to downplay these men as lone attackers with mental illnesses who have nothing to do with him and his divisive rhetoric.

Recently FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to Congress that white supremacy is a "persistent, pervasive threat."

What today's hearing unveils is the urgency to have  that the difficult and uncomfortable conversation on race before white nationalists d that conversation with their twisted beliefs and stir up the fears of other whites who feel threatened by the population shift that's occurring wherein people of color will be in the majority by mid-century. 

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FBI Director: White nationalism a 'persistent, pervasive threat'

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The 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville was meant to mainstream white nationalism.

White nationalists, and/or white supremacists, have become bolder and more dangerous, and should no longer be ignored, said FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Wray testified before the House Appropriations Subcommittee Thursday (April 4) that these radical-right elements are a "persistent, pervasive threat" to U.S. security, contradicting Donald Trump who shrugged off questions about the danger of white nationalists.

“How would you define the danger to public safety that is posed by white supremacist extremism?” asked Committee Chair Rep. Jose Serrano (D-N.Y.).

Wray responded that the “danger ... of white supremacists, violent extremism or any other kind of extremism is, of course, significant.”

The Trump-appointed director added: “We assess that it is a persistent, pervasive threat. We tackle it both through our joint terrorism task forces on the domestic terrorism side as well as through our civil rights program on the civil side through hate-crime enforcement.”

As if to underscore Wray's statement, the DOJ announced last week that multiple members and associates of a white supremacist gang known as the 1488s, have been arrested and charged for their alleged roles in a racketeering enterprise involving narcotics distribution, firearms trafficking, and acts of violence including murder, assault, and kidnapping.

According to the indictment, the 1488s are a violent and “whites only” prison-based gang with approximately 50 to 100 members operating inside and outside of state prisons throughout Alaska and elsewhere. The 1488s allegedly offered protection to white inmates if they joined the gang, and all members were required to “be white, look white and act white.” 

Members allegedly often had tattoos incorporating Nazi-style symbols; however, the most coveted tattoo of 1488s members was the 1488s “patch” that could be worn only by “made” members who generally gained full membership by committing an act of violence on behalf of the gang.

In the wake of the mass shooting of Muslims in New Zealand, the House Judiciary Committee announced its plat to host a hearing Tuesday, April 9, addressing the rise of white nationalism in the U.S. and the hate crime and hate speech surrounding the movement, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the committee’s schedule, according to The Daily Beast.

The committee, which is chaired by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), will “examine the causes of racial and religious violence, assess the adequacy of federal hate crimes statutes, and scrutinize targeted domestic surveillance of specific groups,” Nadler wrote in a letter last November to the Homeland Security Department, Justice Department and FBI.

Nadler, who is Jewish, told Roll Call in an interview last year that, as part of his committee’s hearings on hate-fueled violence, he wants to examine “the extent to which [the rise in hate crimes] correlates with the president’s rhetoric and coddling of white supremacists.”
The number of hate-related incidents increased for a third straight year in 2017, according to an FBI report released In November.

For nearly two decades, counterterrorism forces in the U.S. largely ignored the rise of militant far-right extremism, The New York Times reported.

At the April 9 hearing, lawmakers will “examine hate crimes,” the “impact white nationalist groups have on American communities,” and the “spread of white identity ideology,” according to a tweet from the Judiciary Committee Democrats on Thursday.

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People Acting Stupid: Anonymous driver harasses Boston motorist

RYL LEI

Out of nowhere, a woman drove up next to an Asian American woman and held up this sign.

By Louis Chan
ASAM NEWS

AN ASIAN AMERICAN woman near Boston had to look twice, apparently stunned by the ignorance of a passing driver.

Ryl Lei looked over to her right and saw a woman holding up a sign that read “show me your green card.”

It was the perpetual foreigner stereotype personified. I mean why else would you assume someone had a green card? Why else would you even ask for one?

The woman didn’t stop there. She flashed several other signs as well. There were so many Ryl said she wasn’t fast enough to capture all of them in a photo.

One read “homosexuality is a sin.”

Can she spell “make America great again?”

Ryl wrote on Facebook, “I NEVER in my life thought i would encounter someone like this. I’m not naive and clearly know “they” exist.. but I never thought while sitting at a stop light enjoying the fact it’s the end of the week….I’d turn my head and see the ignorance IN MY FACE… LITERALLY WITH PURE INTENT!! I almost lost myself and followed her… but because my son and his friend was in the back seat I had to educate them about what type of society we actually live in despite what I try to protect him from.”

This isn’t the first time this woman has done this.

AsAmNews found a brief news item from 2016 published by Universal Hub.

The article included a photo of what appears to be the very same sign or at least one very similar that reads “show me your green card.”

The woman she flashed the sign to said “Maybe she saw my dark hair and laborer clothing and made an assumption . She was also pulling up next to pick up trucks and such on highway and shaking her sign at them . There was no action I could take on the highway – and frankly, she scared me as you can’t be right in the head to incite such bigotry . So I snapped her photo while sitting in traffic but I couldn’t get her plate!!”

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Aug. 12, 2017: Racists wake up America, but not Trump

White nationalists displayed confederate and nazi symbols in Charlottesville, Virginia Aug. 12.

THE DEAFENING SILENCE of Donald Trump this morning woke me up.

When he finally did say something about the violence in Chalottesville, Va., his tepid response drew flak from Republicans and Democrats.

While white nationalists openly marched through the streets of Charlottesvill, Va., clashing against police and counter-protestors, the normally quick-to-tweet Trump stayed away from any messaging on social media until his wife broke the silence with her own tweet.

The "Unite the Right" rally was originally planned to show opposition to the planned removal of a statue honoring Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in the city's Emancipation Park.

As the clashes continued into the afternoon, the leader of the U.S., Donald Trump, stayed silent while other Republican leaders - such as Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Marco Rubio, both of whom are not entirely innocent in enabling the ultra far right, were quick to condemn the violence and hate. 

Oddly, Trump's immigrant wife, Melania, was the first person from the White House to note the violence. Usually, the Trump White House strategists don't like the First Lady upstaging her husband. It would be glorious if she acted on her own without consulting her husband.

Trump's failure to quicky condemn the violence that his presidency and campaign have spawned speaks volumes about where he stands and who is giving him PR advice. Trump's strategy to divide the country and to curry the favor of the disgruntled white male racists is becoming more and more apparent.

Because his wife beat him to the punch, do you think Trump felt compelled to release his own denunciation of Charlottesville violence - 45 minutes - after Melania.

When Trump finally did address the Charlottesville situation in a pre-sceduled event where he was supposed to talk about veterans affairs, his comments fell far short of condemning the white nationalists. Instead, he suggested "many sides" were to blame for the deadly violence. There was no mention of new-Nazis, the KKK, white nationalists or the alt-right.

As is his custom, he blamed everyone else but himself. Instead of taking any responsibility for emboldening the racist organizations taking part in the "Unite the Right" rally. The violence, he said,  has "been going on for a long, long time" before he took office.

Trump was getting heat from all sides, not just from his usual critics from the Democratic side of aisle. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the longest serving Republican senator in history, said on Twitter: "We should call evil by its name. My brother didn't give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home."

Let's not forget, Trump has still not tweeted anything condemning the bombing of a mosque in Minnesota a week ago. Perhaps he doesn't want t offend his supporters or admit that his anti-Muslim rhetoric is inspiring violence.

***

Why Charlottseville? Generally, the city is a liberal community as the home of the University of Virginia. Eighty percent of its voters voted for Hillary. 

The city council voted to remove the statues of Confederate Generals Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee. Litigation has stalled the statues' removal.

The white supremacists rallied around the statues as a form of misdirected pride in their heritage. 

Let's be clear, Lee is a traitor who tried to bring down the Union. He is not a heroic figure. The Civil War was not about "states rights," it was about the right to own another human being - slavery.

A statue to a traitor is not honoring our heritage, it's a reminder of how low people can go to rationalize evil.

The Charlottesville city council was correct in renaming the Robert E. Lee Park to Emancipation Park and the removal of the Lee statue is the correct vote.

Friday night, as a warmup to today's tragic events, about 100 white supremacists marched through the University of Virginia campus. It was chilling to see them carrying torches. The image conjured up images of the hooded KKK when they made their night rides to intimidate and kill African/Americans.

The torches being used were tiki-torches that you can buy in any garden store or Pier One outlet.  The irony is, those torches were more than likely made in China.

The white nationalists and their tiki-torches.

***

PTSD: The events of the day was the removal of a scab on an unhealed wounds. All the hurt caused by the thousands of micro-aggressions that people of color suffered in their lives came rushing forth as if the wound was inflicted yesterday.

All the racist slurs, the jokes, the unintended slights, the invisibility, the feelings of being inadequate, of being told you're not good enough, the rejections, the bullying, the hurt that all these incidents caused and which I repressed in order to keep my sanity came rushing back in a series of flashbacks. 

***

Who are these racists? I think it is pretty safe to say that not one of the terrorists in Charlottsville was a Muslim or one of those "bad hombres" Trump has railed against or is trying to target with his immigration policies.

The incidents brought Kurt Bardella back onto the media to explain the alt-right to cable news anchors. Bardella, a Korean who was adopted as a baby, was a consultant to Brietbart News. He quit that job when he realized the violent nature of his clients.

Various terms were used to describe the terrorists: white nationalist, neo-Nazis, facists, white supremacists, the alt-right. To me, they are cut from the same cloth. One more term that describes the demonstrators could/should be added, "Trump supporters." 

No less than David Duke, former head of the Ku Klux Klan, linked all the ultra right-wing groups to Trump in a tweet that responded to Trump after Trump condemned the violence, (but not white supremacists), 

“This represents a turning point for the people of this country,” said Duke earlier in the day at the rally. “We are determined to take our country back. We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. That’s what we believed in, that’s why we voted for Donald Trump. Because he said he’s going to take our country back. That’s what we gotta do.”

These ultra far right groups believe they have gained legitimacy because some of their members are on the White House staff as Trump advisors. Steve Bannon and  Steven Miller. They see Trump as their champion.

For someone quick to attack his critics, his refusal to utter KKK, new-Nazies, facists or white nationalists is telling. The only other group to be spared his twitter wrath is Russia and Putin.

Let's be very clear! The targets of these wackos are people of color: Asians, African Americans, Latinos. When they here Trump's campaign cry of "Lets Make America Great Again," what they hear is "Let's make American white again!."

***

In the afternoon, one of white nationalists drove his car at high speed into a crowd of counterprotestors, killing one woman and injuring 19, several seriously. 

The driver was arrested and identified as James Alex Fields, Jr., a 20-year-old resident of Ohio.

A police helicopter monitoring the protests crashed killing the pilot and a passenger.  The crash is still under investigation.

Almost as an afterthought, Trump finally tweeted his sympathies for the three who died.

Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions said that the Department of Justice will investigate the Charlottesville violence.

***

Calling out the alt-right: Virginia  Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, was did not mince words in his strong denunciation of the right-wing groups:

"I have a message to all the white supremacists and the Nazis who came into Charlottesville today. Our message is plain and simple. Go home," said McAuliffe at a press conference Saturday evening. "You are not wanted in this great commonwealth."

"You came here today to hurt people, and you did hurt people," the governor said. "But my message is clear. We are stronger than you. You have made our commonwealth stronger. You will not succeed."

"There is no place for you here, there is no place for you in America," he continued.

Finally, a politician with the guts to call out the racists and bigots.
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Poll: Americans feel race relations has worsened under Trump

At a Donald Trump rally, his supporters unfurled this flag.

MY STOMACH GROWLED. I left home without eating breakfast to run a load of errands. I was hungry. What happened next ruined my appetite. 
So my wife and I went into a restaurant in one of those look-alike strip malls in a nondescript San Francisco suburb. After ordering, my wife said, "I wouldn't have said this a few years ago, but I feel uncomfortable." I knew what she was saying. The shooting of a South Asian in a Kansas City had just happened that week.

Despite the diversity of the Bay Area, the further you go from the urban center, the whiter the suburbs gets. The ex-burbs, is where people go when they feel too uncomfortable with people of color. But even on the fringes, the burbs are getting more diverse as minorities move out of the urban centers to find their American dream.

I looked around the restaurant and noticed, except for a busboy and one of the waitresses, we were the only people of color in the place. Certainly, the only Asians. I wondered which one of them was carrying. We are not alone having that uneasiness, that air of tension was just enough to make us more aware of our surroundings. and the people around us.

The rise of Donald Trump has changed the complexion of race relations in America. Some of his followers now think it is OK to be overtly racist. For some people who used to keep their darker thoughts to themselves, it is not OK to:

• Shoot an Indian/American in a Kansas City restaurant and tell them "Go back to your country," as what hahppened a few months ago.
• Beat an Asian/American courier and then shout, "That's white power," an incident that occurred in New York City last week.
• For a teacher to have her students read about Islam, a religion that is "immoral and corrupting."
• Single out people of one religion and try to keep them from traveling to this country.
• Build a wall to keep out Mexicans.

And we've all  heard about the shootings in the black community and the deportations of  immigrant Americans.

The examples go on and on.

As Trump enters his second hundred days, the incidents of hate continue to rise. Bigotry is no longer held in check by civility.

A new Reuters/Ipsos opinion show that Americans think that race relations is deteriorating and lot of the blame can be put on the current residents of the White House.

Trump's pronouncements against Muslims and immigrants are credited with emboldening a wave of white supremacists and white nationalists of different stripes now collectively referred to as the "Alt-right."

The poll, taken from March 28 to April 3, asked more than 2,800 adults to rate the danger of racism and bigotry in America. About 36 percent gave it the worst rating possible, saying they considered racism and bigotry an “imminent threat” to the country. That is up a few points from the 29 percent who answered the same way two years ago.

“People look to emulate the president. So they think ‘if he can be terrible, I can be terrible,'” said a white law school student in Houston who voted for Hillary Clinton.

Several poll respondents expressed growing unease about race and civility, even if they had not directly experienced or seen racist acts.

It’s not just minorities who say they’re feeling tense. A respondent in Many, Louisiana, a town of about 2,700 people, said he sensed rising anger among black residents after Trump’s election.

“You can just feel the tension building, like something is fixing to come to a head,” said the 46-year old, who did not vote in the November election. “There is more of a hatred toward white people.”

It is that cultural anxiety among white people that pushed Trump over the top. "It's your last chance," Trump told his mostly white supporters during the campaign. "You might not get another chance." He didn't say race, white or black, but his supporters and people of color understood the underlying appeal to the racial preference of the crowd.

More Democrats, 46 percent, than Republicans racism and bigotry pose an imminent threat to the country. And that's part of the problem, Trump supporters dont' see the racism in their thinking and actions.

The supporters who like what Trump has done -- banning Muslims, attacking immigrants, withholding funds from traditionally black colleges -- see in him a champion in their fight to keep their position of dominance and power to which they feel they are entitled. That is what Trump means when he says he wants to make America great again, or when he tells his supporters that he wants to take America back.

The tug-of-war between those who want to keep the status quo and those who want to pull the country into a new century is what put Trump into power. The question is Trump's ascendency the old America's last hurrah, or is it the sign of the country descending into a bomb-proof bunker?

“People talk to me differently since the election, I get different looks, different comments,” said a black 31-year old food delivery worker in Helena, Alabama. “A lot of people are on edge.”

Lunch was a quickly consumed by my wife and I. No one said anything derogatory to us, no funny looks s in our direction or racist scribbings on our receipt. But I just couldn't get shake that nagging feeling of anxiousness. Things are different now.

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